Gujarat tops e-way bill collection since April
Despite industries such as textiles and ceramics, among others, facing teething problems, Gujarat has emerged as the leading state in generating e-way bills during April, May and the first week of June. The state has generated over 10.72 million interand intra-state e-way bills, followed by Maharashtra (8.13 million), Karnataka (8.05 million), UP (7.64 million) and Haryana (7.63 million), respectively. VINAY UMARJI writes
Despite industries such as textiles and ceramics, among others, facing teething problems, Gujarat has emerged as the leading state in generating e-way bills during April, May and the first week of June.
The state has generated over 10.72 million inter- and intrastate e-way bills, followed by Maharashtra (8.13 million), Karnataka (8.05 million), Uttar Pradesh (7.64 million) and Haryana (7.63 million), respectively. Rolled out on April 1, the e-way bill system under the new Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime requires businesses and transporters moving goods worth more than ~50,000 from one state to another to generate and produce an e-way bill. The new regime mandates for e-way bills to be generated for intrastate movement of around 19 commodities as well.
For the period of April, May and first week of June, Gujarat recorded a collection of 4.9 million, 5.2 million, and 573,453 e-way bills, respectively.
According to R R Patel, joint secretary-checkposts in the commercial tax department of the government of Gujarat, the state’s strength in manufacturing played a major role in the high e-way bill collection. “Being a manufacturing state, Gujarat had a high frequency of inter-state as well as intra-state goods movement. This led to the state posting the highest number so far,” Patel told Business Standard.
Among the goods, cement, chemicals & fertilisers, tobacco, cotton and yarn led the e-way bill collections for Gujarat.
Patel attributed the trend to around 23 mobile squads conducting surprise checks.
Despite sectors like textiles and ceramics facing a decline in capacity utilisation due to impact from the GST regime, the state did not see much impact on goods movement, said Patel. “Only fabric sector which was out of VAT but was brought under tax regime under GST was new to the whole system of e-way bill. Hence, we saw some impact there but it was marginal,” he added. Earlier, a similar system had been implemented online during the VAT regime. “Under the VAT regime, we had already uploaded the 402 and 403 forms online with transporters and businesses being aware of generating such bills for transit electronically. Hence, when the tax regime changed, many of them had no trouble switching to the e-way bill system," said Patel.
The e-way bill system under the GST regime requires businesses and transporters moving goods worth more than ~50,000 between states