Road map
In his budget speech on 28 February 2006, P. Chidambaram, the Finance Minister, announced the target date for implementation of GST to be 1 April 2010 and formed another empowered committee of State Finance Ministers to design the road map. The committee submitted its report to the government in April 2008 and released its First Discussion Paper on GST in India in 2009. Since the proposal involved reform/ restructuring of not only indirect taxes levied by the Central but also the States, the responsibility of preparing a Design and Road Map for the implementation of GST was assigned to the Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers (EC). In April, 2008, the EC submitted a report, titled "A Model and Road map for Goods and Services Tax (GST) in India" containing broad recommendations about the structure and design of GST. In response to the report, the Department of Revenue made some suggestions to be incorporated in the design and structure of proposed GST bill. Based on inputs from GoI and States, The EC released its First Discussion Paper on Goods and Services Tax in India on 10 November 2009 with the objective of generating a debate and obtaining inputs from all stakeholders.