About 20 days after its launch, the Electronic Cash Ledger (ECL) for payment of custom duty is now normalising although several exporters and importers continued to complain of problems, said the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs.

“We are happy to announce that ECL is moving towards normalcy and is receiving more acceptance among users,” the CBIC said, adding that users made customs duty payments of `1,200 crore on Thursday.

Further, 18,064 e-wallets have been activated since the launch of ECL on April 1 and on April 20, 27.78% of challan payments were made through ECL rather than netbanking or NEFT/RTGS, the CBIC said.

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“We have observed a 99.9% success ratio for payments made through ECL vis-a-vis other modes (netbanking or NEFT/RTGS) on Thursday,” it further said, adding that only 203 wallets continue to be blocked today due to the ongoing reconciliation exercise but will be unblocked soon.

The CBIC is expected to launch the second phase of the facility from May 1 under which payments relating to courier shipments would be required to be done through ECL. It would also develop other payment functionalities such as auto-debit of self-assessed amount from the ECL when the liability becomes due.

Launched on April 1, the ECL is an automated payment system under which users can maintain non interest bearing deposit for payment of taxes. However, many users also took to social media and complained that the money in their ECL wallet is stuck and the ledger is blocked or the payment is not being reflected.

“By and large the ECL system has stabilised but there continue to be occasional hiccups. These cases should be looked into before the government takes a call on levying of interest,” said Ajai Sahai, DG and CEO, Federation of Indian Export Organisations.

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As an interim measure to help traders, the CBIC had previously waived interest on the payment of customs duty through the ECL and subsequently said that this dispensation would continue for three days until the system stabilises. Industry is now waiting to see when this dispensation would be continued and is hopeful that the CBIC would wait for some more time before withdrawing it.