Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday asked the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) to take more steps to simplify GST registration, for grievance redressal. She stressed the need for speedy closure of investigations in the Customs and GST cases, while ensuring prevention of tax evasion.
In its presentation, the CBIC said, “detected GST evasion grew to Rs 2,23,170 crore in 2024–25, with voluntary payments totalling Rs 28,909 crore.”
Sitharaman also asked the board to take further measures to prevent wrongful input tax credits (ITC) claims, promptly address public grievances received through the centralised public grievance redress and monitoring system (CPGRAMS) and reduce dwell time for imports, the finance ministry said in a statement.
The average time for grievance disposal has been reduced to just 9 days, significantly better than the stipulated 21-day timeline, the CBIC noted. An impressive 95% to 97% of CPGRAMS appeals are being disposed of within 30 days. This performance has placed CBIC among the top 5 out of 90 Central Ministries in CPGRAMS rankings since February 2024.
Addressing the CBIC conclave with the principal chief commissioners, chief commissioners and director generals of the field formations of the CBIC here, she called for the speedy closure of investigations for customs and Central GST cases, and exhorted for an analysis on detection and recovery and to seek solutions to reduce the gap between detection and recovery.
It was informed that national average for GSTR-3B filing stood at 94.3% in 2024–25.GSTR-3B is a simplified summary return and the purpose of the return is for taxpayers to declare their summary GST liabilities for a particular tax period and discharge these liabilities GST audit coverage rose from 62.21% in 2022–23 to 88.74% in 2024–25. It was also noted that the number of taxpayers repeated for audit more than once in 3 years is zero.
The minister urged the CBIC to expedite the processing of GST and customs refunds to ensure timely redressal and ease of doing business, especially for MSMEs and exporters. About 85% of claims were processed within the statutory 60-day limit, CBIC said.
To promote trade, she asked the Customs to reduce dwell time at seaports, airports, and Inland Container Depots (ICDs) for both imports and exports, and emphasised that faster cargo clearance is crucial to enhance India’s global trade competitiveness and ease of doing business.
According to CBIC, facilitation of cargo through the Risk Management System (RMS) has steadily increased, with 86% of cargo being facilitated in 2025, up from 82% in 2022.
Taking note of pending disciplinary matters, she directed that disciplinary proceedings against the officials at different levels be concluded expeditiously in a time-bound manner.
The CBIC was also urged to fill all vacant posts at the earliest, across various levels, to strengthen field formations and enhance administrative efficiency.