Government of India’s commitment to provide ‘Power for All’ and its decision to support green energy transition, marked a new beginning for the country. With solar energy transition promising to save billions ($) in fossil fuel imports, create jobs, initiate technological growth, facilitate industrial growth, and offer the opportunity to claim the export market, developing countries like India need to quickly seize the opportunity and become a solar powered country. And factoring in India’s recent initiatives towards solar growth, we can fairly assume that the country has chosen the right path to social, economic, and industrial revolution, which will illuminate the future of more than 200 million people (who currently live without electricity). Like any industry, there are multiple challenges in countrywide solarisation in India. However, recent taxes and duties levied on growing solar industry must be considered as the biggest challenge in path to India’s most important and impactful transition.
taxation
How Indian Solar Sector is doing under GST Regime
GST is undoubtedly one of the bold reformations that promised to change Indian economic landscape for good. It has led to standardization of indirect tax laws, thus making them business friendly and intelligible for investors. Cascading of taxation was also removed by GST, which was the biggest problem with previous tax regime. All this significantly leads to ease of doing business in India.
However, aside from offering benefits, has also presented some challenges for nascent solar industry of India. Indian solar industry made incredible strides in recent years reaching 21 GW installed solar capacity in 2018 Q1 from a meagre 10 MW in 2010. New projects are being introduced, and investor interest in Indian solar sector is growing. In this scenario, policy reformations could have opened up even bigger opportunities for growing solar industry, leading India out of energy scarcity.
