Tirupur: On the eve of the first anniversary of the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) by the Narendra Modi-led NDA government at the Centre, garment exporters here, who have been suffering a lot due to various GST issues, heaved a sigh of relief, albeit temporarily with the Centre easing the procedure for filing applications for GST refunds.
The Central GST Commissionerate has come out with a temporary solution for filing applications for GST returns to exporters.
The Tirupur Exporters Association (TEA) president, Raja M Shanmugham, said, “after revision of format of the form on the GST website on April, 15, 2018, it has been difficult to upload the statement three containing details of export invoices with Export General Manifest (EGM) details. The concern is that the EGM field on the website accepts only seven digit numeric values, while in many cases EGMs are issued in four or six numeric digits.”
Mr Shanmugham noted that in cases where the EGMs are raised by the container freight stations (CFS), they contain alpha numeric figures which the system was not accepting till now. According to him, due to non-availability of seven-digit EGM immediately, garment exporters were not in a position to file refund applications.
Meanwhile, following a studied representation by the TEA to the Commissioner, Central GST Commissionerate, Coimbatore, Sreenivasa Rao, the officer has now given permission to the exporting units for filing of refund applications with available EGMs on hand as a temporary measure.
Welcoming this decision, Raja M Shanmugam, said, “the commissioner stated that they (exporters) should get ‘Gateway EGM’ and file them before the final settlement of claim, within two months. Accordingly, after filing of refund application, 90 per cent of the amount will be released to the exporting units.”
The TEA chief also said that garment exporting units have been taking efforts to receive ‘Gateway EGM’ from the shipping liners, following the temporary relief measure provided by the Modi government.
