Faster System fails to disburse refunds within 72 hours: TMA

Towel Manufacturers Association (TMA) has said that the newly introduced Faster System has become totally failure to disburse refunds within 72 hours as promised by the government.

Muhammad Haroon Shamsi, Vice Chairman TMA said in a statement on Saturday that a majority of exporters failed to get 100 percent refunds against their paid Sales Tax and no way out designed for deferred claims.

"To solve the heavy liquidity problems of the exporters zero rating should be reconsidered or dedicated account for the GST refunds is only solution," he said.

He thanked Abdul Razak Dawood, Advisor to the Prime Minister, for taking a keen interest in exporters' liquidity issue and again visiting FBR during the lockdown period for survival of exporters.

While experiencing in filling and getting refund under newly introduced FASTER system, it has been noticed with great concerned that para (2) of Rules 29 Risk Management System are not seems to have been running which defined as under: (2) For the refund claims processed through FASTER or ERS, the part of the refund claim that is not verified or not found admissible shall be subjected to system validation checks every week and RPO shall be generated for the amount found valid during each validation check.

After every validation process, the information regarding RPO generated, if any, as well as the objections shall be communicated by the system to the refund claimant and also to the concerned RTO or LTU for information.

RPO so generated shall be communicated to the State Bank of Pakistan for payment in the aforesaid manner. After eight validation checks, including the initial one, if any amount still remains un-cleared, the same shall then be processed under STARR channel.

In view of above the FASTER system should have rotate its validation checks every week and RPO be generated for the amount found valid. But we not see any partial payment. Resulting deferred amounts from original claims are pending and increasing on each month.

Faster processing information uploaded on FBR site says that Differed Claim from Jul-19 to Oct-19 has also been processed on 26-01-2020 but our members have not received a single penny. Besides above old deferred of Sales Tax refund since 2004 till date is still pending. We are in the month of April 2020 and still talking about July-Oct 2019.