The Electronic Way Bill which was postponed by the Government due to technical glitches in the common portal is likely to roll out by the end of this month. Reports said that the Government is working to fix the glitches in the website to make a problem-free rollout of E-Way Bill.
Till then, the trial run of the e-way bill system, which promises to enable faster goods movement through a seamless portal-driven payment system without lorries having to wait at state borders, will, however, continue.
Reportedly, the National Informatics Centre (NIC), the government’s nodal IT procurement arm, will be ready with a foolproof e-way bill system end of the month. NIC is responsible for building most of the e-governance applications of the government at the center, state and district levels. It is also responsible for building and maintaining internal systems that interoperate within the ministries, including email services and other online portals.
The much-awaited E-way bill was launched by the Government on 1st February. However, the same was withdrawn due to the problems in the website.
“In view of difficulties faced by the trade in generating e-way bill due to initial tech glitches, it has been decided to extend the trial phase for generation of the e-way bill, both for inter and intra-state movement of goods. It shall be made compulsory from a date to be announced,” the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) tweeted on February 1.
Under GST rules, ferrying goods worth more than Rs 50,000 within or outside a state will require securing an electronic-way or e-way bill through 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.
Karnataka was the only state where the e-way bill system has been functioning for the last several months. It is learned that because of an unforeseen technical problem, the entire load of handling countrywide e-way bills fell on Karnataka’s system.
