ICICI Bank has announced that the bank has now exited the GST Network. The Bank is facilitating the collection of Indirect Tax by selling its stake. It sold entire stake of GST network which was 10 per cent, to 13 state governments.
In a regulatory filing ICICI Bank said that the total stake sale was of Rs. 1 Crore. It also mentioned that the stake transfer to the stake governments would be completed till March 2020.
The ICICI Bank will transfer 0.81 per cent to the Telangana Government and 0.14 per cent to the Assam Government.
The Bank will transfer 0.82 per cent each to Goa, Kerala, Manipur, Tripura, West Bengal, Delhi, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh governments.
As the Government has taken a decision to make GST network into a public sector entity, ICICI decided to exit from the network.
As per the decision of Government the Centre will have 50 per cent stakes in the GST Network and the remaining will be divided to the states in pro rata basis.
As per the current scenario, the 49 per cent of stakes arew with Centre and states together. This is providing backbone to the indirect Tax regime. HDFC, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, NSE Strategic Investment Co and LIC Housing Finance are holding remaining 51 per cent stake.
GSTN was established on 23 March 2013 as a private limited company under previous UPA government. The GSTN is non profit entity. It has been under criticism because private companies were holding major share, and therefore it was demanded to change its structure.