The re-introduction of e-way bill under the Goods and Services Tax started off smoothly with both the government and businesses facing no major challenges on the first business day since its launch.

“It has been a very successful rollout. There were no glitches till now,” said Finance Secretary Hasmukh Adhia on Monday.

As many as 5.48 lakh e-way bills have been generated. While 2.59 lakh such online tickets were generated on April 1, another 2.89 lakh were generated on Monday.

“On an hourly basis, about 60,000 e-way bills are being generated. We are prepared for a much higher capacity,” said AB Pandey, Chairman, GST Network.

As many as 11.18 lakh taxpayers have registered on the e-way bill portal along with 20,057 transporters.

GSTN, along with the National Informatics Centre, has developed the software for the new provision.

The e-way bill, which is an online ticket under the GST for movement of goods costing above ₹50,000, was launched on April 1 for inter-State transport.

Adhia said the e-way bill for intra-State movement of goods will start from April 15.

“We will announce the schedule of States which will start intra-State e-way bills after one week,” he said.

The system seemed to face few glitches on the ground level with most businesses seeming positive about the launch.

“A staggered rollout of e-way bill has meant less load on the system…Few filers faced some issues while logging in, but largely the outcome has been fine. We still need to see how the system functions over the next few days,” said Archit Guota, Founder & CEO, ClearTax.

Even the logistics industry had few concerns. “The bill will be an effective instrument to track the movement of goods and to keep a check on the tax leakage leading to revenue loss which will result in increased efficiency of business as a whole,” PC Sharma, CEO and Whole-Time Director, TCI Express.

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