Foreign trade initiatives

The Government of India has announced a new Foreign Trade Policy for the period 2015-2020 on 1st April, 2015. Following are key measures envisaged under the foreign trade policy. Specific Export Obligation under Export Promotion Capital Goods (EPCG) scheme, in case capital goods are procured from indigenous manufacturers, has been reduced to 75% of the normal export obligation, in order to promote domestic capital goods manufacturing industry.

Under Merchandise Exports from India Scheme (MEIS), export items with high domestic content and value addition have generally been provided higher level of rewards. For reward schemes and duty exemption schemes, hard copies of applications and specified documents which were required to be submitted earlier have now been dispensed with. Landing documents of export consignment as proof for notified market, can now be digitally uploaded. There will be no need to submit copies of permanent records/ documents repeatedly with each application, once the same are uploaded in Exporter/Importer Profile.

For faster and paperless communication with various Committees of DGFT, dedicated e-mail addresses have been provided for various Committees, e.g. Norms Committees, Exim Facilitation Committee etc. The policy introduces two new schemes, namely, ‘Merchandise Exports from India Scheme’ (MEIS) for incentivising export of specified goods to specified markets and ‘Services Exports from India Scheme’ (SEIS) for increasing exports of notified services from India.

The scrips can be used for payment of customs duty, excise duty and service tax. Business leaders who have made a special contribution to India’s foreign trade will be eligible to become a Status Holder, which allows the holder to obtain special consideration for privileges designed to reduce transaction time and cost. The government has described this scheme as a “boost to Make in India.” It allows EPCG participants to reduce the amount of capital goods they buy from domestic manufacturers from 90 to 75 per cent.

To support the Digital India initiative, the government will begin allowing companies to submit a number of documents and applications online. New rules allow export oriented units (EOUs), electronic hardware technology parks (EHTPs) and software technology parks (STPs) to share infrastructural facilities and transfer goods and services between units as well as a number of specific schemes for EOUs, EHTPs and STPs, respectively.