Established in 1978, the Department of Commerce celebrated its glorified journey of 38 years of existence on 3rd November, 2016. The day long programme begins with the hoisting of the Departmental flag by the Head of the Department Professor Ashit Saha. Professor Saha paid rich gratitude to the founder faculties for their contributions and pledged to carry the torch forward to a newer height. Professor Ajanta B. Rajkonwar, Dean School of Commerce and Management Sciences shared her experiences and she urged upon the students to be more responsive to the contemporary issues as they will play a major role in the nation building. Professor Pranjal Bezborah in his speech has uttered that we should march forward by taking into cognizance the experiences of the past and take pledge for doing better in the future. On this occasion, the member of the non teaching staff of the Department Mr. Bhugeswar Sonowal also spoke about his feelings about the Department.
As a part of the programme, 38 numbers of sapling has been planted by the Faculties, Students and Research Scholars to mark the occasion. In the Afternoon, the Foundation day Talk was delivered by Mr. Pravin Kumar Jain, CA, Pravin Jain and Associate, Dibrugarh on the topic “ GST –an Overview” at Indira Miri Conference Hall. The officiating Vice Chancellor Proffessor Karabi Deka Hazarika along with the Deans of various Schools, faculties from the school of Commerce and Management Sciences and more than 110 students has attended the Talk. While addressing the house, CA Pravin Jain emphasised the prevailing system of indirect taxes. He informed the house that about 160 countries of the world have already adopted the GST. While he explained the constituents of indirect taxes viz. excise duty, VAT, service tax and custom duty, he expressed concern about the problem of the existing system of indirect taxes mainly related to multiplicity of taxes, cascading of taxes i.e. taxes on taxes, and non uniformity in the tax system across the country for which GST has been introduced to simplify the indirect tax system, he added. He said that the GST is a destination based tax and thereby the consuming State will get benefit. Taxes to be subsumed under the GST have also been explained by him. He also focused about the taxes which do not come under the purview of GST and made interaction with the members of the house regarding the benefits of the GST. He made it clear to the house that the rates of tax will be same but the prices of the product may not be the same throughout the country. In his deliberation CA Jain said that with GST, GDP will be improved but he also pointed out that in almost all the countries with the GST regime, much development have not been noticed as an outcome of GST. According to him, though Govt. will also find easier to administer the tax system with the introduction of GST, but the adoption of the model of dual GST would be very much complex at the initial stages . In this system, there will be CGST, SGST and IGST within the structure of the GST. According to CA Jain the implementation of the GST will be very difficult as he assumed that there would be immediate inflation after the introduction of GST. He said that the GST is more suitable for the big corporate houses and not for the smaller entities. There were several pertinent quarries being made by the audience after his deliberation and he addressed all the issues to their satisfaction.
The Department of Commerce has decided to take many initiatives in the coming months which include a seminar on Agricultural and Rural Marketing, Workshop on Case study writing and an alumni meet “Sampark 2017” during the second week of February 2017 which will feature several activities in association with the alumni of the Department as reported by the Foundation Day Programme coordinator Dr. Chimun Kumar Nath of Department of Commerce, Dibrugarh University.