Quicker refunds helping exporters in GST regime

Overall, the five years of GST have made life easier for exporters and importers, despite some rude shocks and unresolved issues

Since the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) five years back, the exporters have benefitted through quicker refunds but a few issues remain.

In the pre-GST regime, getting rebate on the excise duty paid on the export product involved submission of many documents and effective liaison with the officers empowered to grant refunds. That entailed costs and delays. Under the GST regime, the Integrated GST (IGST) paid on the export product is refunded quickly and automatically through the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) system. This has greatly helped reduce the working capital requirements of exporters.

For refund of unutilised input tax