The textile traders' community in the country’s largest man-made fabric (MMF) hub has been facing lot of difficulties on the GST portal due to technical glitches and sought extension of deadline in the online e-way bill generation. An e-way bill is required for movement of goods worth more than Rs 50,000.

Though the central government has launched the e-way bill generation on trial basis for the inter-state movement of goods above Rs 50,000 starting from January 16, the traders have demanded that implementation of e-way bill must be done only after ensuring the system works properly.

The traders have demanded that implementation of e-way bill should be deferred till March 31 or else it will hit the inter-state movement of goods from February 1 onwards.

For a seamless movement of goods across states, the GST Council, earlier this month, decided to go for early implementation of the e-way bill for inter-state movement of items from February 1 and uniform mandatory compliance from June 1 next year.

The leader of the Federation of Surat Textile Traders' Association (FOSTTA) Devkishan Menghani said that the finance ministry has stated that the trader and transporters can start using this system on a voluntary basis from January 16 this year.

But, a majority of traders are unable to upload their details or rather the system crashes in the middle of filing of details. On the other hand, the transporters are insisting on the e-way bill details, without which the goods are not loaded for transportation.

At this point of time, the government should first rectify the technical problems on the GST portal and then implement the e-way bill compliance. Till then, the government must extend the implementation of e-way bill.

FOSTTA president Manoj Agarwal said that time and again they have raised their genuine concerns under GST, but the government is not ready to hear. They are ready to follow the rules, but the GST portal itself is not working.

A large number of textile traders had gathered at Abhishek Market on Ring Road to address their problems to Navsari MP C R Paatil on Tuesday. The traders raised the issues related to filing of the returns, ITC-04 and other technical problems on the GST portal.