Industry hopeful of smooth trial run of e-way bill

India Inc is hopeful of a smooth trial run for the e-way bill system which commenced on Tuesday.

The trail run comes near a fortnight before the implementation of e-way bill for inter-state transportation of goods under GST from February 1, 2018. An e-way bill is required for movement of goods worth more than Rs 50,000.

In December 2017, the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council decided to go for early implementation of the e-way bill for inter-state movement of items from February 1, and uniform mandatory compliance from June one next year.

"The success of this E-way bills system rests primarily on whether the process of generation of an e-way bill for inter-state supplies of goods is seamless and the GSTN portal can support millions of e-way bills being promptly generated every day," said Atul Gupta, Senior Director, Deloitte India.

"Equally, the transporters should not be subjected to endless wait at various checkpoints at State borders by the State GST administration for checking the e-way Bill. To prevent delays at check points the GST inspectors at check points should have instant electronic access to verify the E-way Bill and they should be instructed not to do physical checks which can be onerous and time consuming and lead to delays in transportation of goods'."

According to Suresh Nandlal Rohira, Partner, Grant Thornton India: "The E-way Bill trial begins today and while the government is testing to track every transaction in the country, the same would now also be controlled within the State starting Feb 01st alongside the Budget announcement.

"Hopefully, the industry would not experience this as a deterring process in their supply-chain and would observe more of transaction tracking mechanism to reconcile revenues. The government may require to re-look at the time frame in terms of the validity (shelf life) of e-way bill considering certain sectors which are sensitive or non-sensitive."

--IANS

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