Ahmedabad: Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman today interacted with the students of Indian Institute of Management after delivering IIMA JSW-SPP Institute Lecture on The Economic Rebound and the Indian Economy in 2021 and beyond. Presented is video of the same.

FM Nirmala Sitaraman in reply to a question by IIMA student, when is the govt planning to reduce the cess on fuel:

I will not be able to say when. It’s a dharam sankat. It’s not just a cess. You have excise duty of the Centre, then you have VAT of the states that are percentage driven. We can bicker about who earns more. Everything that the centre earns, 40 percent of it goes to the state. So I am left with just that portion. So there’s no just hiding the fact that there’s revenue there. You ask any state, this revenue is there. There’s a revenue consideration both for the centre and the states and that is why I strongly believe that it is no longer competitive if the end consumer should pay less and the burden should be less on them, and I agree with that point and I concede it also from the pet point of view that more the fuel cost more inflation, and there are more arguments. It’s no longer competitive for anyone to say, that hey centre you reduce first then the state will come on board. They may or may not. If eventually we want the consumers not to be bearing so much burden on this score, it is both the centre and the state that need to talk. I concede that that’s where action has to be.