The Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIM-B) has signed two Memorandums of Understanding (MoU) with the Commercial Taxes Department (CTD), Government of Karnataka, recently.
The first MoU was signed between Executive Education Programmes (EEP) at IIM-B and the CTD, and focusses on capacity building programmes for CTD officers for three years at IIM-B. It also aims to focus on managerial skills, big data, forecasting revenue, undertaking investigations, building economic perspectives, and other critical areas that are meant to improve the managerial ability and efficiency of officers of CTD, in the transition period of tax administration from VAT to GST.
The second MoU was signed between two of IIM-B’s principal investigators, Prof Pulak Ghosh, Decision Sciences area, and Prof Arnab Mukherji, Public Policy area, and CTD. For this, CTD will focus on using various aspects of big data analytics and state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms to derive various insights. It includes insights into fraud analytics, sectoral patterns, hot-spot mapping for revenue collection and understanding effects of economic policy on GST revenue collections. The duration of the agreement is two years.
This is a paradigm shift in the approach of the Karnataka Govt, to stabilise tax administration supported by IIM-B, to bring professionalism into tax administration and build a platform for CTD for big data analytics by providing solutions through research analysis.
Expertise of IIM-B in big data analytics, NIC’s software skills and the CTD’s domain knowledge could form a symbiotic relationship to achieve the desired objectives. The Karnataka Government has also accorded permission to the CTD to undertake big data analytics on GST data in collaboration with IIM-B.
Prof Arnab Mukherji, said: “GST is a new era of commercial tax administration that needs dynamic and proactive administration authority that needs to be well prepared. The training MoU will bring in the best of ideas and practice, and focus on change among officers at CTD to constructively manage the ever-changing status quo for commercial tax collection.”
MS Srikar, Commissioner of Commercial Taxes, Government of Karnataka, said: “Equipping our officers to effectively implement and spearhead GST implementation in Karnataka required a well-designed and holistic capacity building programme. Our association with IIM Bangalore to create and implement such a programme was highly successful during 2018-19. Based on these learnings, we are excited to enter into an MoU with IIM-B for a comprehensive GST training programme for our senior and middle-level officers”.
Prof Pulak Ghosh, said: “Insights from big data and ML are being increasingly used to identify trends, sectoral challenges, and inform corporate decision-making and government policy in many national and international fora. A careful analysis of the GST data not only has the ability to improve revenue collection, but also to identify policy experiments that help the government meet its goals.”