In an interview with ET Now, Navin Kumar, Chairman, GST Network , talks about the number of resgistrations, the GSTN website and how it has been designed to handle heavy workload. Edited excerpts:

Navin Kumar: As of yesterday, the total number of new registrations was 7,98,000. This is the number of applications submitted and out of that about 5,30,000 have already been approved. As far as migration is concerned - the number is now well beyond 70 lakhs out of 86 lakhs.

Do you think the real test of GSTN will be in the month of September when everybody starts filing the returns?

Navin Kumar: We are starting the functionality for uploading invoices next week. That functionality will be a very important one because we want all the businesses, particularly those that generate very large number of business to business invoices to come and upload their data on our system. The load on the system will keep on increasing from that point of time and we are ready for it. So whether it is return filing, invoice uploading - our system has been designed to take care of heavy load and we are confident that our system will be able to handle the load easily.

As we understand GSTN is the IT backbone of GST. How will you make sure that all the small traders that have yet not registered will be registering in some more time?

Navin Kumar: The registration depends on the person, so whenever a person wants to register and he has to keep in mind the provision of law which says that within a month of the date, when the liability to register arises, he has to register. Our portal has the functionality of registration open 24 hours so they can come anytime and register themselves.

How do you plan to tackle all the difficulties that might arise with the GST registrations?

Navin Kumar: If a person who wants to register goes through the help files, the user guide that we have put in our portal, we have also put a number of videos and video-based tutorials. If they go through these they will face no problems. I case they do face any problems, they need to contact our helpdesk, which will guide them and help them complete their process.

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Our system will be able to handle registrations easily: Navin Kumar, Chairman, GST Network - Economic Times