The Left government in Kerala will now hit the “MNC retailers” with a stiff turnover tax, while it will lobby for a Central legislation along the lines of the erstwhile MRTP Act to contain them.Finance Minister Thomas Isaac told the Assembly today that he was seriously considering imposing a turnover tax linked to the floor area ratio of retail outlets, which he claimed had the backing of the traders’ lobbies in the state.Later, Isaac said this disincentive would directly target the big retail groups — like Reliance and Bharti Walmart — about to come in. This was since they operate out of hypermarkets and supermarkets that are significantly larger than the home grown ones. “I will take a final decision after taking a closer look at other fallouts. Especially to ascertain that fixing the floor area criterion would not affect local trade,” he said.The government, he added, was also favourably inclined to support other counter measures suggester by local traders like small local retail outlet chains designed to be as convenient and attractive as the big MNC supermarkets.These would be in addition to ongoing efforts by the Kerala Horticulture Development Corporation (Horticorp) to set up procurement centres all over the state for farm produce and set up hundreds of government-supported vends across the state, besides going for large scale contract farming involving signing price contracts with the farmers, providing the inputs, and then buying out their entire produce.In addition, the government is also planning to help open up some 5,000-odd small retail outlets to sell basic provisions, at subsidised establishment costs.
