India’s Finance Minister says new Goods and Service Tax regulations and e-commerce will boost express delivery sector

Speaking at an Express Industry Council of India (EICI) conference today, India’s Minister of State for Finance, Jayant Sinha, highlighted how the e-commerce boom and the long-awaited new Goods and Services Tax (GST) reform will both help to boost the express delivery market. “Ecommerce is really going to be taking off,” said the Minister. “Flipkart and Amazon are also transforming the supply chains and the notion of instead of having big malls and people coming and buying things that notion is going to be rapidly replaced by delivery system that we are seeing from Flipkart, Snapdeal, Amazon and so on. So the whole logistics infrastructure, because of ecommerce, is going to change.”

Sinha also urged the Express Delivery Services industry to prepare itself for roll out of new GST regime coming into effect from April 2016. Speaking on the occasion, EICI Chairman R K Saboo said: “The industry is seeking simplification of procedures. We believe the expected GST regulations have the ability to standardise legislations and smoothen out operations”.