New Delhi: Hundreds of exporters from across the country are still waiting to receive their Goods and Services Tax (GST) refunds totalling Rs 6,053 crore from the government. The exporters claim that the promises of easy and swift GST refunds have not materialised and most of them are facing an acute shortage of capital.
Though the Ministry of Finance led by Nirmala Sitharaman has said that GST refunds of Rs 91,149 crore have already been disbursed, exporters say that the refunds took years to reach this mark and even after steps taken by the Ministry of Finance, Rs 6,053 crore was pending.
According to Ministry of Finance data, Rs 2,473 crore worth of IGST (Integrated Goods and Services Tax) refunds are pending with the government and with regard to refunds of Input Tax Credit (ITC), Rs 3,580 crore is still pending with the government.
GST has caused more harm than good to hundreds of exporters waiting to get their GST refunds, giving them a tough time.
Ajay Sahai, Director General and CEO of Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO), said: “Exporters were forced to run from pillar-to-post to get their GST refunds and ITC refunds. However, the government has sped up the refund process, but more than Rs 6,000 crore is still pending. Delay in GST refunds creates liquidity problems, particularly for MSME exporters and makes their business activities difficult.”
“We have already put forth our demand for introducing only an online GST refund clearance process contrary to the existing mix-physical and online refund clearance process. The GST Network (GST-N) is unable to auto-verify the refund claims. Manual verification takes a lot of time,” Sahai said.
Gagandeep Rastogi, a Delhi-based exporter, told The Sunday Guardian: “Due to the failure of NBFCs and rising cases of NPA, banks have stopped lending to exporters for business activities and to fight the situation, exporters started putting in their own hard-earned money or borrowed from private lenders, but delayed GST refunds have made them unable to repay the borrowed money.”
Mahendra Kaushik, proprietor of Astha Enterprises, said: “Our GST refunds claim was settled only after completion of a year and caused so much stress to me that I even thought of leaving my business. Every day, GST officials ask for new documents and with so many bureaucratic hurdles, the process of GST refunds is still a sad affair.”
On the other hand, the CBIC (Central Board of Indirect Taxes & Customs) officials claim that the department has already fast-tracked the process of refund clearance, for which it has already held many refund drives. Also, officials of the GST department say that some of the refunds are pending due to discrepancies in the documents needed for the claims filed by the exporters.