Government cracks down on exporters fraudulently obtaining GST refunds

By

Isabelle Crossley

Published
Jun 21, 2019

The government has listed 5,106 exporters which it believes have fraudulently claimed goods and services tax refunds, it said in a statement on June 20. The government aims to crack down on “risky” exporters.

The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs made a statement on Thursday concerning the amount of GST fraud it has discovered amongst exporters. However, despite the large total of fraudulent GST refunds it detected, the CBIC was keen to assert that this still only refers to a small percentage of India’s total exporters.

"Only 5,106 risky exporters have been identified so far as against about 1.42 lakh total exporters,” said CBIC in a statement, as reported by the Press Trust of India. “Thus the risky exporters are only 3.5 percent of the total exporters.”

Although no official total has been released, sources told the Press Trust of India that the claims could exceed Rs 1,000 crore ($143 million). The CBIC will introduce manual checks for online GST refunds in order to reduce IGST fraud moving forward. 

The CBIC also used its statement to reassure genuine exporters that their refund claims will still be processed and issued in a timely manner. On June 17, the CBIC had instructed its Customs and GST sections to further look into the claims of exporters it deemed “risky”.