The Empowered Committee of Finance Ministers will meet at Kovalam near here for two days from today.

This is the first time that the committee is meeting after KM Mani, finance minister of host state Kerala, took over as the chairman.

It comes in the context of the Lok Sabha having passed the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Bill , which goes to automatically hog the agenda of the meeting.

An official spokesman quoted Mani as saying that a major task was to evolve supportive environment for drumming up a consensus ahead of April 1, 2016 from when GST would come into effect.

By now, consensus had been reached on many issues. But there is still a long way to go before it can be replicated with respect to a number of related issues among states, and between states and the Centre.

Mani has been of the view that new the GST regime would give a boost to the economy that is on course to recovery.

But his stance on a range of related issues from the view point of both as a finance minister of a ‘destination’ (consumption) state and leader of a regional party bears some watching.

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