Inter-state e-way bill mandatory from February 1

The e-way bill system will be available on a trial basis from January 16, while states have time till June 1 to implement it.

NEW DELHI:Shipping goods across states is set to get quicker as the GST Council on Saturday decided to implement the e-way bill mechanism throughout the country by June 1 after reviewing the readiness of the IT network.“The rules for implementation of nationwide e-way bill system for inter-state movement of goods on a compulsory basis will be notified with effect from February 1, 2018. This will bring uniformity across states for seamless inter-state movement of goods,” the finance ministry said in a statement.

The decision comes after the Council, headed by finance minister Arun Jaitley, met earlier during the day via video conference, to decide upon the advancement of the implementation of e-way bill under the Goods and Services Tax (GST).Under GST rules, shipping goods worth more than `50,000 within or outside a state will require securing an electronic-way or e-way bill by prior online registration of the consignment.

To generate an e-way bill, the supplier and transporter will have to upload details on the GST Network portal, after which a unique e-way bill number (EBN) will be made available to the supplier, the recipient and the transporter on the common portal.The Council had decided that till such time as the national e-way Bill is ready, the states were authorised to continue their own separate e-way bill systems. The finance minister had said that system will be introduced in a staggered manner, with effect from January 1, 2018, adding that the document will be made applicable on an all-India basis from April 1.

As a nationwide e-way bill system will be ready for implementation on a trial basis by January 16, transporters can start using this system on a voluntary basis from the same date, it said.
While the system for both inter and intra-State e-way bill generation will be ready next month, the Council decided that states may choose their own timings for implementation of the document for intra-state movement of goods on any date before June 1, 2018.

The mechanism will not only help the tax authorities monitor inter-state and intra-state movement of goods but also cut transportation time by reducing loss of time at check posts, said R Muralidharan, senior director, Deloitte India. Further, this is expected to help the dealers who do inter-state transactions in multiple states as the e-way bill process will now be common across states, he added.