bengaluru its nigh impossible to think of a south indian meal without rice and now with the country getting ready for the rollout of the goods and services gst tax regime south indians for whom rice is a staple food have a reason to worry all varieties of branded rice are set to get dearer by 5 per kilogram come july 1among the south indian states karnataka is likely to be worst affected owing to the additional cess on grains levied by the state government on traders and millers besides the 5 gst tax on branded food grains the state government levies a 15 market tax on food grains which the agriculture marketing produce committee apmc has decided to continue even after the rollout of gstsouth indian states have refrained from levying tax on rice since its our staple food said wholesale rice traders in yeshwantpur whose families have been in the business for generationstraders pointed out that the retail price of the branded sona masoori rice priced between rs 28 and rs 60 per kg could shoot up by rs 2 to rs 4 from july 1 the variety of rice is generally preferred by the middle and upper middle class families in fact sona masoori rice alone is sold under a large number of different brands in the state sriram sona swastik sun gold and om gold to name a few there are nearly twenty other varieties of rice in karnataka including bullet rice bt rice etcsecretary of karnataka state rice millers association ksrma n sreenivas rao said the centres one nation one tax slogan has no meaning most of the packaged food grains including rice ragi finger millet will attract double taxation under gst regime weve been requesting both the state and centre to do away with taxes for at least rice but to no availhe pointed out that the centres decision to impose 5 tax on rice was motivated by the fact that 83 of the rice consumed in north india was nonbranded but that is not the situation in the south where majority of the people buy branded rice since they value qualitymembers of ksrma also met union finance minister arun jaitley seeking exemption for rice under gst regime hes promised to hold a meeting with us soon said kg nagaraj joint secretary of ksrma