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With just three days left for the e-way bill roll out, Goods and Services Tax Network CEO Prakash Kumar has revealed that only 11 lakh entities or one-tenth of total businesses and transporters registered under GST have registered themselves on the dedicated platform.

The number is about one-tenth of 1.05 crore registered businesses under the GST and about 70,00,000 filing returns.

Kumar, however, assured that most of the registrations are likely to happen at the last minute.

Finance secretary Hasmukh Adhia said the GST Network, is much better prepared to roll out the new system from 1 April. “...But I’m not too sure whether traders, dealers and transporters are still ready. I would like to appeal to them to register themselves on the e-way bill portal ...as early as possible; they should not then tell us that we didn’t inform them,” Adhia said.

The e-way bill provision of GST, first introduced on 1 February, was made mandatory for inter-state transportation of goods worth over `50,000 through road, railways, airways and vessels. However, after the e-way bill portal crashed on the first day due to technical glitches, the government extended the deadline and asked GSTN to develop a fool-proof system before the re-launch of the bill.

In its last meeting, earlier this month, the GST Council, decided on a staggered rollout of the e-way bill starting with inter-state from April 1 and intra-state from April 15.