In a major relief to the exporters, the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs ( CBIC ) has sanctioned Rs. 12,639 crore as IGST refund during the refund fortnight ended in 31st March 2018.
The Board had observed GST refund fortnight across all its field formations from 15th – 31st March 2018 to deal exclusively with the pending GST refund claims (IGST & ITC). Till this month Government accounted about 13000 crores of pending amount.
Out of the total Rs 12,639 crore sanctioned to exporters, Rs 7,632 crore is on account of payment of Integrated GST (IGST) on exports under the goods and services tax (GST) regime, while the rest of the number of Rs 5,007 crore has been cleared as refunds for input tax credit (ITC), CBIC chairman Vanaja N Sarna reportedly said in a letter.
Under GST, exporters are required to pay IGST on exports and then claim refunds. The second type of refunds to exporters under GST involves the refund of GST paid on the purchase of inputs.
As a part of Board’s special drive on March 15th Rs.2293 crores sanctioned for IGST refund and Rs 633 crore allowed for ITC refund during the drive.
Until the last month, the board was unable to process remaining refund money due to the insufficient data regarding the refund claim and mismatch errors created by exporters.
The Goods and Services Tax law was implemented from July 1, 2017, with huge celebrations. Even after completion of eight months of the rollout, 70% of total refunds to exporters become idle. Consequently, refund to those exporters has been delayed for eight months now.
Now this turn to be a great relief to those exporters whose source of working capital blocked due to the delay of sanctioning the refund amount. Prior to March 15, IGST refunds worth Rs 5,339 cr had been sanctioned and ITC refunds worth Rs 4,374 cr had been approved.
The relaxation in getting the refund should bring cheer for exporters who have been complaining about technical issues, locked up tax refunds affecting the working capital availability and hurting operations.
