A five-member Group of Ministers (GoM) headed by Bihar’s Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi on Saturday announced that the electronic-way bill system under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime will be launched from February 1, 2018.
The major reason for advancing the launch was revenue shortfall owing to illegal transport of goods between States following absence of checkposts after the launch of GST last July. Earlier, the GST Council had decided to launch the e-way bill from April 1, 2018.
The government-owned National Informatics Centre (NIC) will be the implementing agency for the bill.
The GoM, which held a video-conference with GST Council Chairman and Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, decided to try the e-way bill system on trial basis from January 15.
Mr. Modi, who chaired the 5th meeting of GoM here, told presspersons that States have been given liberty to launch e-way bill for intra-state transportation of goods by June 30.
The rules governing the compulsory implementation of the system across the country for inter-state movement of goods would be notified from February 1. These regulations would be meant to bring uniformity across States for seamlessmovement of goods.
