The Ministry of Textiles organized a full-day training workshop on GST in Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi today, in which about 175 officials of the Ministry, its PSUs and members of Export Promotion Councils participated. The workshop was held in partnership with National Academy of Customs, Excise and Narcotics (NACEN) under the Department of Revenue, Ministry of Finance.The Union Textiles Minister Smt. Smriti Zubin Irani was in the Chair. Revenue Secretary, Shri Hasmukh Adhia; Secretary, Textiles, Shri Anant Kumar Singh; Convenor, Law Committee on GST, Revenue Department, Shri P.K Mohanty; DG, NACEN, Shri P. K. Dash; Financial Adviser, Ministry of Textiles, Shri J&K Dadoo were also present. During the one-hour talk by the Revenue Secretary, he gave a brief overview and the philosophy behind the tax structure for the textile sector and clarified the doubts raised by industry participants.Several transition issues relating to procedures to be followed on registration, migration, refund, credit for duty paid on stock, etc. were discussed in detail during the demonstration sessions. The Clothing Manufacturers’ Association of India (CMAI) made a presentation on a software named ‘Adhigam’, which has been developed by TCS, for use of CMAI members. The software offers multi lingual solutions and essentially aims at making the small manufacturers and traders GST ready. The software also enables traders to scan the existing invoice and translate it into a GSTN-compliant invoice. It operates on the principle of inter-locking and will enable matching and marrying of Input Tax credit of invoices in the value chain, with automatic reminders to the vendor to pay tax where he has not done so.The workshop is one among several steps taken by the Ministry of Textiles towards building preparedness in the sector, for seamless transfer to the GST mode. Besides this, all Export Promotion Councils and PSUs under the Ministry have been directed to train their officials and open call-centres to address concerns of the industry. The officials will then constitute a resource pool to train others in each EPC/PSU. A GST cell, headed by the Economic Adviser, has also been set up in the Ministry for this purpose.