Organisations would do well to upgrade their tech infrastructure well before the GST Bill is passed.

Prakash Kumar, CEO, GSTN, told Business Line on the sidelines of a CII conference here that as and when the Bill is passed, time available for businesses to analyse its impact and change business functions will be limited. “Organisations need to look at it as a business transformation rather than a change of tax mechanism,” he said.

Tech implementation

Kumar's concern stems from the fact that while 18 States are in various stages of tech implementation, there is still some work that needs to be done in terms of getting the business processes compatible with the technology.

Tech companies like Infosys who have bagged the GST Network project believe that the opportunity is huge. “It will be the largest open source project in the world with 50,000 transactions per second, and we need to test it up to 250,000 transactions to validate the system,” said CN Raghupathi, co-convenor, CII Karnataka IT Panel.

Massive transactions

When launched, GSTN is expected to handle 70 lakh taxpayers and 300 crore business invoices every month, create reports and analytics servicing both Central and States Tax Departments, provide common registration, return filing and e-payment services to the taxpayers.

It will also ensure integration of the GST common portal with existing tax administration systems of Central and State governments and other stakeholders.

However, concerns remain. According to one of the delegates, there are questions over the security of the system. “With Aadhaar, the systems malfunctioned quite a bit, so confidence is low, especially as it involves financial information of companies,” said a delegate who did not wish to be named.

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