Testing times for e-way bill portal from today

Over 1.71 lakh bills have been generated on the launch day

Over 1.71 lakh inter-state e-way bills have been generated on the day of nationwide launch on Sunday, with experts saying that the real test of the portal will be on Monday.

Beginning Sunday, businesses and transporters have to produce before a GST inspector e-way bill for moving goods worth over Rs

50,000 from one state to another. A total of 10,96,905 taxpayers have registered on e-way bill portal till date. Further 19,796 transporters, who are not registered under GST, have enrolled themselves on the e-way bill portal, the finance ministry said in a statement.

"1,71,503 e-way bills have been successfully generated on the portal from 00:00 hours till 17:00 hrs of 1st April, 2018," the ministry said.

Official at the Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN), the company which has developed the IT backbone for GST regime, said that the eway bill platform been working smoothly and Karnataka is also generating e-way bill for intra-state movement of goods. The implementation of the nationwide e-way bill mechanism under GST regime is being done by GSTN in association with the National Informatics Centre (NIC).

Karnataka is the only state which has implemented the e-way bill system for moving goods within the state. The state has been using the eway bill platform since September for intra-state movement of goods. Experts said that the real test of load capacity of the portal will be tested on Monday as the number of e-way bills generated on Sunday is much less compared to weekdays. "No major hiccups on the first day of the relaunch of the inter-state e-way bill system. The e-way bill portal seems to be much stable this time. However, it would be important to watch how the portal functions for few more days to be absolutely sure," EY Partner Abhishek Jain said.