Finance minister Piyush Goyal counters Amit Mitra's claim on pending GST refunds of exporters

Kolkata: Union Finance Minister Piyush Goyal on Monday countered the West Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra’s claim on pending GST refunds of exporters. “From 31 May to 15 June, all exporters were asked to claim a refund and most of those who applied were paid. For claims up to Rs 10 lakh, a self-certification was required. For those who claimed over Rs 10 lakh, were asked to provide a chartered accountant’s certificate. The state government must be knowing about that,” Goyal said. [caption id=“attachment_4215463” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File image of union finance minister Piyush Goyal. Image courtesy: PIB[/caption] Mitra had recently claimed that a large number of exporters across the country were awaiting refunds to the tune of Rs 25,000 crore, which have been stuck due to the inability of the GST Network. There have been three lakh applications from exporters of the country, involving Rs 25,000 crore, which are awaiting refunds, Mitra, who is also a GST Council member, had said. To a question on Mitra’s allegation about the rise in hawala transaction due to lacunae in the GST automatic digitised process, Goyal said Mitra should make efforts to stop these illegal transactions. Mitra had said that as a result of GSTR 3B not being backed by invoices, “not only are we going completely manual, hawala transactions have also increased massively”. Mitra had cited the West Bengal government’s own studies which suggested “you are not putting invoices and there is no way to check it”. GSTR 3B is a tax return form mandatory for all those who have applied for Goods and Services Tax (GST).