Investiture Ceremony for conferment of Presidential Award of Appreciation Certificates and Medals for – ‘Specially Distinguished Record of Service’ to the officers and staff of Central Board of Indirect Taxes & Customs was held at Guwahati on 21st July, 2023.
The Union Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs, Nirmala Sitharaman was the Chief Guest on the occasion. Revenue Secretary Sanjay Malhotra, and Special Secretary to Government of India and Chairman, Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) Vivek Johri, along with Members of CBIC were present. The Presidential Award of Appreciation Certificates announced on the occasion of Republic Day, 2023, was presented to 29 officers.
Vivek Johri, Chairman, CBIC, welcomed the dignitaries and highlighted that in the last couple of years CBIC is focused to improve its performance with a view to achieve excellence in all aspects of its work whether it is revenue collection, taxpayer facilitation, Audit, Anti-Smuggling, Business process reengineering, IT infrastructure or physical Infrastructure. He emphasized on competence of human resources in service delivery. He mentioned that more than 1900 officers have been promoted in this calendar year itself to keep the resources in place. With the setting of training academy at Palasamudram, the capacity building through training at entry level as well as mid-career will get further boost.
Sanjay Malhotra, Revenue Secretary congratulated all the Awardees and their family members on this auspicious day. He urged all the officers to put their best foot forward to bring laurels to the Dept and appreciated the good work being done by them.
The gathering was addressed by the Union Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs, Nirmala Sitharaman. In her address, She congratulated all the awardees and their families. She highlighted that the GST has not only made impact in collection of Revenue, its but also in distribution between the States and Centre in a formulated manner. She gave the credit to the former Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, for his contribution in implementation of GST in the country which resulted into “One Nation One Tax” regime in India.
Further, she highlighted that Assam was first state to ratify 122 constitutional amendment bill in 2016, which led the way for remarkable achievement of introduction of GST. She also highlighted that North East is the biggest beneficiary of GST as this tax regime is destination / consumption based. North East has witnessed GST Revenue growth of 27.5%. The taxpayer base has increased significantly from 1 lakh to 3.45 lakh in NE. And in Assam, IGST collection has increased 12 times since its inception. Revenue collection in other states of NE, such as Sikkim and Meghalaya has also increased significantly.
Further, she highlighted that the capacity of GST IT infrastructure has consistently and steadily been increasing and 37.74 lakh e-way Bills, 9.78 lakh payment transaction and 24.85 lakh return filing, have been handled in one day. Further, 17.48 crore e-invoices have been uploaded in one month.
She highlighted that Customs role in North Eastern States is very important, as this region has more than 5000 Km of land boundary with four (04) neighboring countries. She informed that there are 25 land Custom station in NE, out of which 15 stations are already equipped with Customs Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) systems. She directed CBIC to equip the remaining 10 Land Customs stations with EDI by end of this Year i.e. December, 2023.
She credited CBIC in checking smuggling of Gold, Ganja, and Heroine. Further, she emphasised that there is still a lot to be done in respect of preventing smuggling of synthetic Drugs and cigarettes. She praised CBIC for setting the standards across the globe and making Indian Customs a world class Agency.
Sanjay Kumar Agarwal, Member Compliance Management, presented the vote of thanks. He thanked Hon’ble Union Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs to manage time from her busy schedule for the Investiture Ceremony 2023, as the Monsoon Session of Parliament is going on. He assured that the directions of the FM shall be complied in respect of coverage of Indian Customs EDI system.