Exporters' woes under GST

New Delhi, Sept 10: Exporters are having a tough time since the roll-out of the new indirect tax regime as the online facility to claim refunds is not yet available, with many even postponing shipments as they grapple with low funds, stakeholders and experts have said.

The worries are greater for small and medium exporters who have a turnover of less than Rs 20 crore as their cost of working capital has significantly risen with refunds not coming so far under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime. The company with a monthly turnover of Rs 6 crore to Rs 8 crore, exports services worth Rs 4 crore to Rs 6 crore every month.

GST expert Pritam Mahure said, “In GST regime, exporters are facing challenges as the upfront exemption is not available and given this working capital of exporters is getting blocked. I hope that the government forms a high level committee to address their challenges or else the working capital blockage can derail the struggling exports scerio in India.”

Under GST, there is also Integrated GST applicable on the export turnover, for which there are two methods available — one to export without payment of GST (under cover of Letter of Undertaking or Bond) and second with payment of IGST and then claim refund of it. The former GSTN Chairman vin Kumar, who retired recently, said, “For exporters, it is not yet available. For exporters there is going to be a separate form where he can claim refund of IGST. Currently the online facility is not active on GST portal.” The exporter is required to capture details of monthly export for GST return and this is a tedious work, he said.

Further, the refund of GST can be claimed only if the vendors pay GST and this is required to be tracked by the company, which is leading to more hassles for the exporters. Hoerbiger India said, “We are being held responsible for compliance by vendor, which is unreasoble as SME exporters don’t have manpower to ensure all these.” Hoerbiger India said, “Exporters are investing a lot of time during return filing process as the GSTN system is not robust. If such problems continue then the company will have to focus only on returns on that export.” There is no surety on whether the tools or website will work on a particular day as due to traffic surge GSTN system was down multiple times, thus exporters are facing challenges in filing of GST returns, Oke protested. (IANS)