Govt identifies 5,106 'risky exporters' who have fraudulently claimed GST refunds
New Delhi: The government Thursday said it has identified 5,106 "risky exporters" so far who have claimed GST refunds based on bogus invoices, and would manually check their claims before issuing refunds.
According to sources, such fraudulent claims of Integrated GST (IGST) refunds by exporters could exceed Rs 1,000 crore.
The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC), in a statement, also assured genuine exporters that their refund claims would be processed in an automated environment and issued in a timely manner.
The CBIC had on Monday issued an instruction to its Customs and GST formations to verify the correct availment of input tax credit (ITC) by few exporters who are perceived as "risky" on the basis of pre-defined risk parameters.
"Only 5,106 risky exporters have been identified so far as against about 1.42 lakh total exporters. Thus the risky exporters are only 3.5 per cent of the total exporters...
"Even for these risky exporters, the exports are allowed immediately. However, the refund would be released after verification of ITC within a maximum of 30 days," the CBIC statement said Thursday.
The introduction of manual checks in IGST refunds is aimed at preventing unscrupulous exporters from defrauding the exchequer, the CBIC added.
It said that in the last two days - June 17 and 18 - only 1,436 shipping bills filed by total 925 exporters have been interdicted.
"Considering that about 20,000 shipping bills are filed by roughly 9,000 exporters on a daily basis, the intervention is negligible," the CBIC said.
"The new verification exercise is aimed at preventing unscrupulous exporters from defrauding the exchequer and bringing a bad name to the larger exporting community. CBIC would like to assure all genuine exporters that they would continue to get their IGST refunds in a timely manner in a fully automated environment," it added.
In the instruction issued on Monday, the CBIC had asked the director-general (systems) to identify "risky exporters" and inform the respective Chief Commissioner of Central Tax about the past IGST refunds granted to such risky exporters (along with details of bank accounts in which such refund has been disbursed).
With PTI inputs
