Nirmala Sitharaman, the finance minister for the union, stated on Monday that Kerala has not delivered even a single authenticated certificate since 2017-18. Lack of AGs Certificate has caused delays in the payment of GST compensation to some states. In response to a follow-up inquiry, she also stated that Rs 86,912 crore had been made available for GST compensation due to all states through May 31, 2022.According to the law, she claimed, the GST Council, not the federal government, determines who receives GST compensation.“The method for the AGs certification has been agreed upon and is required by law between the Center, the States, and the AG (Accountant General). Due to this, unless the AG provides authentication, compensation cannot be released.The finance minister stated that the AG and the state government in question must resolve any issues if there is a delay in receiving the AGs authentication. The authentication certificates arrival at the central government is delayed if there is an issue between them, she explained.State governments must undertake much more in order to receive GST compensation, Sitharaman said.Referring to Kerala, She said post GST induction, the southern state has not sent the AG certification for the compensation for the year 2017-18, 2018-19, 2019-20, 2020-21. She said Kerala had not sent the AG certification even after one year for compensation. Despite that, the centre has been accused of not releasing the GST compensation.She urged N K Premachandran, a member of parliament from Kerala who posed the follow-up question, to meet with the state government and ask it to provide the AG certificates all at once.Sitharaman promised that she would clear the documents as soon as she received them.Referring to Tamil Nadu, she said that the AGs certificate for 2017–18 has been obtained, and the money has been issued for Tamil Nadu.Even though AGs certified figure of about Rs 4,223 crore for 2020-21 for Tamil Nadu has some disputes, still it has been processed and it will be cleared.But aside from that, all states have cleared all money that are accessible in the public treasury through May 2022, for which payment is due in early June. She noted in the statement that a total of Rs 86,912 crore will have been paid out by May 31, 2022. WB also claimed that Center owes them GST compensationFew days back, West Bengal also claimed that the Centre owes the state more than Rs 2,400 billion in GST compensation.In response to claims that West Bengals obligations had been ignored, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had stated in Parliament in her statement that audited statistics, which West Bengal has not provided since 2017, are required for the disbursement of GST compensation to states.The Union FM reported that from 2017–18 to 2021–22, West Bengal had not submitted a GST compensation cess claim with an AG certificate. But the West Bengal Government does not agree with the statement.For West Bengal, only the two years of 2017–18 and 2018–19 have seen compensation awarded on a net basis. For the remaining periods, pay has been distributed in accordance with gross revenue. If net revenue is taken into account, the remaining amount that the Government of India owes to West Bengal is Rs 2,409.96 crore.The Finance Minister had previously stated in December that the GST claims of state governments would be approved as soon as she received the necessary paperwork and a certification from each AG.
