"Soon India will be like European Union (EU) with trade barriers being removed amongst the States" said Mr. V Sridhar, Chairman, Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) at the CII Conference on 'E-Invoicing: Adapting E-Business Practices and Policies in a Changing Economic Environment', held in New Delhi today.
Giving the keynote address Mr. Sridhar said "Government is geared up for the implementation of Goods and Services Tax (GST) by 1st April 2010 and efforts are being made to bring consensus among all States and the Centre to subsume State level levies and mitigate the challenges for a successful dual GST implementation."
He added "The Government has been promoting 'e-business' and had started the Electronic Data Interchange ('EDI') initiative for the imports (Customs duty) in 1995 which presently covers 80% of the country's trade through EDI and is expected to attain 90 % by end of the year. As India's IT Act already enables invoicing through electronic medium, there is a need to create awareness for e-invoicing amongst businesses. Since the implementation of GST is on the cards, the time is opportune for industry to participate and start pilot projects involving their vendors and other channel partners to help build acceptability of e-invoicing."
Mr. Robert Parker, CFO, IBM India Pvt. Ltd. said "The digital and physical infrastructure of the world would be converging in a friction free internet future. While most B2B messaging - such as purchase orders and delivery confirmations can be easily automated, the companies have been reluctant to embark on paperless invoicing in India. This has been partially due to inter-operability and security concerns but the greatest obstacle has been legal uncertainty." He summarized that "e-invoicing provides multifold benefits like real time data delivery; significant cost reduction on paper, time and administrative costs; error free invoicing process reducing manual error and costs; real time tax compliance with legislation; inherent security with the use of relevant protocol and accurate management information".
Ms. Ine Lejeune, Global Leader of the Indirect Taxes Network, Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC), stated that "The total GDP of the EU was US $ 16,523 bn and the estimated number of invoices raised annually in the EU was 27 bn. As a result, the potential savings arising out of elimination of paper invoices through e-invoicing initiatives was to the tune of US $ 357 bn, which was approximately 2% of the total EU GDP. For India too, there could be a similar savings potential which needs to be realized. Time was opportune for introducing e-invoicing in the Central as well as the State tax laws given the proposed dual GST scheduled for implementation by 1st April 2010."
Dr. Ganesh Natarjan, Chairman CII National Committee on IT, ITES and eCommerce, and CEO & Vice Chairman of Zensar Technologies Ltd, said that "CII has been working closely with the stakeholders and the Government to enable an e-environment to bring multifold benefits of IT through governance, education, healthcare and agriculture and E-Invoicing is one big step in that direction." "The objective of this Conference on e-Invoicing is to bring awareness about to benefits of e-invoicing and understand barriers of e-invoicing in India and discuss - simplifying financial supply chain management, global trade, international experiences, current challenges and suitable solutions", he mentioned.
