E-Way bill hits new record: 57.8 million e-way Bills generated in March

Electronic permits raised by businesses for transferring goods nside and across states reached a record 90.9 million in March, reflecting vigorous economic activity in the final month of the financial year, according to data available from GSTN, the organisation that processes GST returns.

The observed increase in activity indicates that enterprises are rushing goods into the supply chain in order to achieve annual targets, similar to last year’s activities, which resulted in a record GST receipts of 1.67 trillion in April.

“Since March represents year-end closing for all businesses who are focused on achieving their sales targets for the financial year, dispatch volumes would be quite high, potentially leading to high GST collections,” said M.S Mani, partner at Deloitte India.

According to GSTN data, 57.8 million e-way bills for intrastate shipments and 33 million permits for interstate shipments were generated in March. This is an 11% increase over the total e-way bills collected in February.

However, E-way bill data only shows permits created for shipping consignments worth more than Rs.50,000, therefore the total value of all permits or tax income due cannot be calculated only on the number of permits issued.