Even though the Centre and states are yet to reach a consensus on certain aspects of the proposed goods and services tax (GST), the groundwork for the technology infrastructure has started. As a part of this exercise, a pilot project has been launched in 11 states. Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee on Wednesday said he expects feedback from the information technology (IT) pilot projects by the beginning of next month.

The idea behind the pilot is to make sure that the states� technology infrastructure is GST complaint so that whenever the roll-out takes place, they are prepared with the back-end building, which can be a painstaking task stretching over many months.