21st GST Council meet in Hyderabad on Saturday

Hyderabad: The 21st GST Council meeting, headed by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, will be held here on Saturday, a senior official said on Friday.

During the meeting, the Telangana government will highlight the demands that it made earlier on reduction of tax slabs on certain products and services, state principal secretary (revenue) Somesh Kumar said.

"The meeting will be held in Hyderabad on Saturday...Jaitley will be heading the meeting. All the members (ministers of respective states) are going to raise their issues," Kumar told PTI.

"Our (Telangana) government is going to raise the issue of tax concession for government projects, besides other subjects such as concession for beedi and granite industries, among others," he said.

Telangana Finance Minister Etela Rajender will represent the state in the meeting. This will be the third meeting of the GST Council since the launch of the Goods and Services Tax on July 1, and the 21st since it was set up in September last year.

The council, chaired by Jaitley and having state finance ministers as members, has over the past 10 months ironed out various contentious issues and decided on a four-tier tax structure of 5, 12, 18 and 28 per cent.