Inter-state e-way bill to be rolled out in five states from April 15

E-way bill for movement of goods within the state will be rolled out from April 15, starting with 5 states including Gujarat, UP and Kerala.

From April 1, the government had launched the electronic-way or e-way bill system for moving goods worth over Rs 50,000 from one state to another.

The same for intra, or within the state movement, will be rolled out from April 15, finance ministry said in a statement.

The five states which would form part of the first phase are Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Gujarat, Kerala and Uttar Pradesh.

"With the roll-out of e-way bill system in these states, it is expected that trade and industry will be further facilitated insofar as the transport of goods is concerned, thereby eventually paving the way for a nation-wide single e-way bill system," the ministry said.

Trade and industry and transporters located in these states may obtain registration/enrolment on e-way bill portal, it added.

Since the rollout of inter-state e-way bill movement of goods from April 1, more than 63 lakh such bills have been generated till yesterday. Karnataka is the only state which had rolled out e-way bill system for intra-state movement of goods from April 1.

The GST council, last month, had decided on a staggered rollout of the e-way bill starting with inter-state from April 1 and intra-state from April 15.

Touted as an anti-evasion measure and would help boost tax collections by clamping down on trade that currently happens on cash basis, the e-way bill provision of the goods and services tax (GST) was first introduced on February 1.

However, its implementation was put on hold after the system developed glitches in generating permits. With several states also starting to generate intra-state e-way bills on the portal, the system developed a snag.

Since then, the platform has been made more robust so that it can handle load of as many as 75 lakh inter-state e-way bills daily without any glitch.