Andhra Pradesh government promotes cashless trade

KAKINADA: The commercial taxes department has taken up a programme to promote M-PoS (Mobile Point of Sale) terminals in all commercial establishments, including small and marginal traders. Traders, though, seem to prefer M-PoS instead of E-PoS machines as there is a scarcity of E-PoS machines. Commercial Taxes department officials say M-PoS terminals are more convenient for traders because they can take it along with them as it functions through a mobile. Traders can download a mobile app which connects to a small machine that swipes bank cards for transactions.

“The Commercial Taxes department is aggressively campaigning for M-PoS machines and many traders are attracted to it,” said Assistant Commissioner of Commercial Taxes P. Harendra Babu. According to sources, there are nearly 2 lakh assessees in the state, out of which more than 50,000 traders can avail the M-PoS opportunity. An officer in the Commercial Taxes department, Shaik Zaheer, said that if they use M-PoS, traders will not be cheated by fake currency and it will improve their businesses. He said that traders are coming forward to do digital transactions, though he acknowledged that some traders believe that the department is pressurising them to make the switch because it suspects them of evading taxes. “The promotion of cashless transactions is not an evasion matter, it will improve their businesses,” Mr Zaheer said.

Traders want charges waived:

Traders are appealing to the government to permanently remove service charge and rental charge on digital transactions. They say their thin profit margin cannot bear the burden of a service charge. Though the charge is very low, it will be increased in future. For example, for the distributor of a tobacco company, the profit margin is 1.40 per cent. But bankers levy 1.75 per cent or 2 per cent service charge on a digital transaction. “I will lose my profit and also my business as there is no profit from my business,” he said.

According to the Kakinada Hoteliers Association president Y. Venkatesh, traders find it difficult to pay the service charge and the rental charge.  As it is, business in all sectors is down and this is an added burden. When swiping bank cards in the machines, the standard rental also had to be borne by the trader. Only if the government waives all these charges can business people carry out digital transactions, Mr Venkatesh said.

Ashok Kumar Jain, convener of the Andhra Pradesh Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industries said that cashless transactions will cause heavy losses to small and marginal traders, who like the weavers are going hungry. He appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi not to ruin the retail sector in the name of cashless transactions as the retail business occupies a prominent place in India’s economy. He said that the retail sector should not be ruined by demonetisation or digital financial transactions.

The Andhra Pradesh Federation of Cham-bers of Commerce and Industries passed a resolution  a few days ago not to go in for cashless transactions. “There is a big conspiracy behind the demonetisation. All cashless machines will be imported from either the US or China. Our economy will go to those countries. Cashless transaction is not correct for India and its economy,” said the state convener Ashok Kumar Jain.

When he was told that traders are giving orders for digital machines for cashless transactions, Mr Jain made it clear that the traders can take the machines temporarily to do their transactions but later the machines can be kept aside.