New Delhi: The Union Finance Ministry has released an amount of Rs 1,014 crore to Assam as GST (goods and services tax) compensation for the financial year 2021-22 even as an amount of Rs 549 crore is yet to be released during the current fiscal.

Among the northeastern states, Assam is the highest receiver of GST compensation since 2017, followed by Tripura (Rs 833 crore) and Meghalaya (Rs 633 crore). Arunachal Pradesh received Rs 21 crore, Manipur Rs 46 crore, Mizoram Rs 11 crore, Nagaland Rs 14 crore, and Sikkim received Rs 42 crore as GST compensation from the Centre in the last five years.

The GST compensation regime is about to end in June this year and the Union Finance Ministry has remained non-committal on its extension. When the GST regime was introduced in July 2017, the states were guaranteed to be compensated, during the transition period of five years, if they failed to register a 14 percent growth in GST revenue collection over the base year of 2014-15.

Since its launch in 2017, most of the states relied on compensation to achieve the GST revenue growth of 14 percent. However, the revenue gap only increased over the years. In 2018-19, states collectively could achieve 88 percent of the targeted growth on their own, leaving a shortfall of only 12 percent to be compensated by the Centre.

As the GST compensation regime is expiring in June this year, many state governments have appealed to the Center to extend the compensation period for another five years up to June 2027.