The Chief Commissioner of Central tax, central Excise and custom have recently announced to initiate a special drive for GST refunds from 31st May to 14 June. It will be the second phase of GST refunds after a successful special drive for export return between March 15 to March 30 where the Central Board of indirect taxes and Customs (CBITC) have refunded a total of INR 17616 crore. Out of which, 9604 crore was integrated GST refunds, 5510 crore was ITC refund by the centre and 2502 crore was ITC refund by State. Under this second phase of GST refund, special camps will be organized on June 4 and June 8 in order to settle any refund cases of IGST, SGST, CGST, ITC, excess tax payment, etc. As reported by Indian Express, the Central Bureau of indirect taxes and Customs has sanctioned the GST refund of Rs. 2500 crores which is about 18% of the total pending amount by June 7 2018. All the GST offices and commissionerates are doing their best for fast clearance of the IGST and ITC refunds. Even though they are facing numerous mismatch issues, they are still actively resolving the issues as fast as possible.

According to Nirav Kumar Mallick, the Commissioner of customs, the Special different drive of a GST will started on Thursday and continue until June 14. All the issues related to GST refund will be attended by officers and staff of the department and the office will remain open on Saturday as well for quick disbursal of refund. As per the president of Federation of Indian export organizations Ganesh Gupta, it is estimated that around INR 20000 crores of exporter refund are stuck which the government is planning to clear in a Fast Track second phase of GST refund. The GST Refunds will be organized for applications which were received on or before April 30, 2018. A large number of exporters could not file for their ITC refund because of technical issues due to the fact that the input tax credit and exports occurred in different months. There were many reasons behind the delay in GST refunds as stated by FIEO which include the half electronic and half manual process of ITC refund which makes the process quite complex along with the demand for a necessary documents by the tax authorities. Many states has also cited that lack of sufficient funds have also caused delay in the process.

As stated by the Times of India, a large number of GST refund cases have been registered in Indore, for which the state commercial is planning to conduct special camps in order to speed up the GST refund process worth Rs. 190 crore. Within the fortnight camp, around 4000 applications of Dealers for GST refunds will be cleared between the second phase of clearance. The GST@Gol which is the official Twitter account for handling GST related issues, stated that is special refund fortnight is targeted towards all kind of GST refund for the applications submitted in the form GST RFD-01A before April 30 2018. In their tweet, they encourage all the exporters to visit their jurisdictional tax officers in order to clear the pending GST refund claims before the last date of application. They also stated that necessary documents and copy of applications would be required to submit at the jurisdictional tax office, otherwise the GST refund will not be initiated. Online submission of the document alone will not be enough for processing GST refunds.

Ganesh Gupta also agreed that the GST refund process has significantly slowed down and the Federation has requested the Finance ministry to resolve the issue by organising a Fast Track clearance drive to facilitate pending GST refunds and bring the process on track. He also stated that a major issue in the process is related to the ITC refund which will be resolved by the state.