Exporters ITC refunds to be processed online from next month

In a major relief to exporters, the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) has decided to process the input tax credit (ITC) claims online, which will reduce the ITC settlement time from a few months now to a fortnight and also clear the clogged working capital fast.

"The new automated process will be in place from June. We were attempting to do the same from April, but it got slightly delayed," said an official.

The automatic refund facility is currently available only to those exporters who have paid the integrated goods and services tax (IGST) while exporting goods.

"It has worked well for the IGST refunds. Same kind of system for ITC will be extremely beneficial for exporters," said Ajay Sahai, DG and CEO, Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO).

Once the whole process would be automated, said Sahai the transaction time and cost would come down and there would also be accountability.

At present, exporters claiming ITC refund have to file an application in Form GST RFD-01A on the common portal and then physically submit its printout along with other documents to the jurisdictional officer.

M.S. Mani, Partner, Deloitte India, said while the goods and services (GST) law had an inbuilt provision for faster refunds, operationalising the same would really ease the working capital challenges of exporters.

"It is now essential for businesses to ensure that data required for processing refunds is available in the GST portal. The processing can start only when all relevant details are available online," said Mani.