Power ministry to seek service tax waiver

NEW DELHI: Power secretary HS Brahma on Monday said the ministry would soon approach the finance ministry for abolition of service tax on power transmission that could benefit end consumers by way of lower tariff. “We took it up (the issue of abolition of service tax) with the finance ministry once but the response was not great. We are going to take it up soon,” Brahma told reporters on the sidelines of a CII event here.

In a meeting with the state power secretaries yesterday, five states, including Andhra Pradesh, had asked power minister Sushil Kumar Shinde to approach the finance ministry for abolishing the service tax on power transmission. At present, a service tax of 12.36% is charged from power transmission companies. The states, however, have been demanding total abolition of the tax.