A piece of very exciting news coming for all the GST exporters in the country. The government has announced a single-window facility for processing GST refunds to the exporters. With the help of this new GST refund system, the government will issue both the Central and State GST refunds parallelly to exporters via a single officer to ease out the process.
The sources reported that the facility of issuing GST refunds via a single officer is going to start from this month onward.
Under this new refund system, if an exporter claims a refund from the SGST officer, he/she will pass the request to the CGST officer, who will then issue both the SGST and CGST refunds from his end directly to the exporter. After issuing the refunds, the state and central officer will adjust it among themselves at the end of the month.
This new system will benefit the merchants immensely as they don’t have to wait long for getting the refunds. The government is also preparing important guidelines to implement this new GST refund system effectively. The next GST council meeting scheduled for 20th Septemeber in Goa might also have discussions regarding the same. The GST council experts are also expected to give a detailed presentation about this new refund facility to the state finance ministers for more clarity.
This facility has been primarily started considering the refund difficulties faced by exporters in the past. The small and medium scale exporters have faced maximum difficulties due to late issuance of GST refund. The cash flow of such companies stops due to late issuance of GST refund. This also makes it difficult for them to process further orders.
As of now, GST refunds worth INR 10,000 are still pending to be issued to exporters. On this matter, the Director-General of Fio said that the proposal of a Single Authority to issue GST refunds is a welcome move from the government end. Timely refunds will surely help exporters fasten their business activities. Manufacturing companies, in particular, will be benefited from this move immensely.
This single authority for processing GST refund decision made by the government will also bring a J-curve movement in the continually sluggish Indian economy. It is also worth mentioning that on August 23, the finance minister, Nirmala Sitaraman has announced that all the pending GST refunds of MSME sector companies will be processed within 30 days and further refunds in the upcoming months will be released within two months.
Post this announcement from the finance minister; the CBIC has started a campaign to issue pending GST refunds to exporters between September 1 to 22.
