Disbursing officers ordered to walk sharp for payments

Dimapur, Feb. 7 (EMN): Drawing and disbursing officers (DDO) are directed by the government to strictly adhere to a number of guidelines when releasing payments to contractors and suppliers. The DIPR stated in Thursday report that the Nagaland chief secretary’s establishment has issued an office memorandum stating the stipulations. Chief Secretary Temjen Toy stated in the note that all the DDO must strictly adhere to the conditions before releasing any payments for supplies, including works contract, in order to ensure smooth and correct payments including the GST, to contractors and suppliers. For contractors or suppliers (the word supplier includes works contractors), who are supplying taxable goods and services to departments or establishment of the central government or state government; local authority; governmental agencies: Such persons or category of persons as may be notified by the government on the recommendations of the council shall submit a tax Invoice with a consecutive serial number not exceeding sixteen characters, in one or multiple series, containing alphabets or numbers or special characters - hyphen or dash and slash symbolized as "-" and "/" respectively, unique for a financial year as prescribed by rule-46 of the Nagaland GST Rules of 2017 for preparation of bill and release of payment. Every DDO shall ensure that the GSTIN of the supplier is genuine and active, the notification stated. In order to confirm the activeness of the GSTIN, the DDO can verify by logging in to gov.in and search by GSTIN/UIN in the Search Taxpayer menu. Further, the government stated that every DDO shall ensure that the supplier has filed the previous period of GST Return. “In order to confirm filing of GST Return, DDO must insist upon a printout copy of GSTR-3B, GSTR-1 and challan (sic) in form PMT— 06, the notification stated. It must have a watermark impression on the feody (sic) of those documents as ‘final.’ In the case of consolidated payment challan comprising more than one transaction, the DIPR stated, challan pertaining to the supply made against which the payment is to be released, should be separately created end payment made accordingly. ‘Before initiating any payment, every DDO shall ensure payment of all outstanding liabilities, where the suppliers have signed an undertaking in Annexure ‘A’ of office memorandum no.FIN/REV-3/GST/l/03/450 dated 11th September 2017. ‘If any suppliers of goods and services had failed to pay any outstanding liabilities under GST and filed returns, all subsequent payments against those suppliers must be withheld till such tax liabilities are discharged,’ the updates stated.