India Foreign Trade Policy promotes Trade Facilitation through Digital India

(MENAFN- KNN India) Carrying forward the theme of Digital India of Modi Government, the recently announced Foreign Trade Policy provides a swathe of electronic facilitation to the Indian Importers and Exporters.

Applicants can now upload their application along with the necessary documents for the mandatory Importer Exporter Code (IEC) on the DGFT website and pay the required fee through Net banking. Processing of such applications by Regional Authority (RAs) of DGFT would be done online and a digitally signed e-IEC would normally be issued/ e-mailed to the applicant within 2 working days!!

On successful implementation of the e-BRC (Electronic Bank Realisation Certificate) project, DGFT will now capture details of realisation of export proceeds directly from the Banks through secured electronic mode. This will facilitate implementation of various export promotion schemes without any physical interface with the stake holders. DGFT has also signed MoU with state governments for sharing of e-BRC data to facilitate refund of VAT by the state governments to exporters.

An electronic procedure has also been created to upload various documents in exporter importer profile. Once uploaded, there will be no need to submit these documents / copies of these documents repeatedly with each application.

Facility of online filing of Exim applications has also been introduced with networking of all the Regional Authorities (RA) of DGFT and extension counters with high speed internet. Exporters will also be able to upload copies of all the required documents including technical specifications, literature etc in the online filing system which will be further taken up online for inter ministerial consultation thus making the whole process fast and paperless.

In order to move towards paperless processing, an electronic procedure is being developed to upload digitally signed documents by Chartered Accountant / Company Secretary / Cost Accountant. Exporter will be able to link digitally uploaded annexure with his online applications once the facility is created.

DGFT has also put in place a robust Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) system for exchange of various documentation related activities including import and export authorizations established with other administrative departments, like Customs, Banks and EPCs.