The Finance Ministry has announced that e-way bill will be mandatory for intra-State trade in four more States and the Union Territory of Puducherry from April 25. The four States are Madhya Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Sikkim.
The Ministry also clarified on who should generate e-way bill in ‘bill to ship to’ situations.
It may be recalled that e-way bill is already mandatory for intra-State trade in 12 States — Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Telangana, Tripura, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh.
E-way bills are getting generated successfully and till April 22, more than 1.84 crore e-way bills have been successfully generated which include more than 22 lakh e-way bills for Intra-State movement of goods, an official release said.
‘Bill to ship to’ model
In a typical ‘bill to ship to’ model of supply, there are three persons involved in a transaction — biller (A), shipper (B) and the recipient of goods (C). In this example, ‘A’ is the person who has ordered ‘B’ to send goods directly to ‘C’.
‘B’ is the person who is sending goods directly to ‘C’ on behalf of ‘A’. ‘C’ is the recipient of goods.
Queries had been raised as to who would generate the e-way bill for the movement of goods which is taking place from ‘B’ to ‘C’ on behalf of ‘A’.
The Finance Ministry has clarified that as per the CGST Rules 2017, either ‘A’ or ‘B’ can generate the e-way bill. However, only one e-way bill is required to be generated, said another official release.
Experts’ take
MS Mani, Partner, Deloitte India, said the clarification that either the biller or the shipper can generate the e-way bill puts an end to the speculation that both of them would be required to do so. “There could, therefore, be situations where the invoice and the e-way bill in respect of the same goods is issued by two parties,” Mani told BusinessLine .
To resolve difference
Abhishek Jain, Partner, EY, said the Government has clarified that only one e-way bill would need to be generated.
“This should now aid resolving any disconnects between businesses and on ground officers on the requirement of two e-way bills,” Jain said.