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Alas! Paperwork has increased: Ramu Deora |
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"If one exporter of Ampicillin has done wrong, does it mean that the whole Indian exporters should be penalized." |
Contrary to popular perception, the paperwork has in creased in the last two years in case of electronic filing of applications, says Mr. Ramu S Deora, Past President, FIEO. According to him, the exporters are now increasingly being required to submit several declarations and papers, bonds, legal undertakings, bank guarantees etc. at the time of making applications such as for advance licences. "93 percent exporters, who are exporting below Rs ten crore in India, can’t afford such huge paperwork and if the government is committed to ‘aam aadmi’ then it should do away with this," says Mr. Deora while addressing the Meeting of Board of Trade held at New Delhi on 7th March 2007.
Mr. Deora, who has served the offices of President, FIEO and Chairman, CHEMEXCIL in the past, refers to the Public Notice (No. 60) issued by the DGFT on 13th May 2005 which requires the exporters to submit Appendix 23 duly signed by a Chartered Accountant and the records of past three years along with the application to the DGFT for redemption. Mr. Deora says "If one exporter of Ampicillin has done wrong, does it mean that the whole Indian exporters should be penalized." Recently there was a controversy at the WTO with respect to subsidy for Ampicillin.
Mr. Deora further argues that if the benefit in DFRC and DEPB can be computed according to SION, then why the benefit under advance license scheme should be calculated on actual consumption? He calls the said Public Notice as an attempt to strengthen the much condemned Licence Raj and urges its immediate withdrawal keeping in view the interest of ‘aam’ exporters. Many SSI exporters of chemicals and pharmaceuticals are said to have approached him for taking up the issue with BoT.
The Union Budget presented recently in the Parliament proposed to substantially slash the peak basic customs duty from 12.5% to 10% While Mr. Deora thanks the Finance Minister for this, he inquires if the CENVAT credit of additional customs duty of 16.87% is allowed, why can’t the CENVAT credit of basic customs duty which is only 10% be allowed. He suggested that alongwith the continuation of export promotion schemes including the DEPB scheme, a parallel new scheme of taking direct credit of basic customs duty at factory like CENVAT should be introduced to help those who want to pay first basic customs duty on their imports and then avail CENVAT of basic customs duty after export at factory itself under the supervision of central excise official.
Mr. Deora also drew the attention of the Board Members towards the cumbersome procedure of renewal of export house certificate. He said while earlier the renewal procedure required just a simple one page certificate of export figure for the past four years, now tons of papers of past three years plus current year duly certified by a chartered accountant and signed on each page stating shipping bill no, date, product etc. are being asked for. The Commerce Secretary, Mr. G. K. Pillai quickly reacted to this and announced dispensing of all the additional papers required for renewal with immediate effect. Meanwhile, Mr. Deora pointed out the diminishing benefits against export houses certificates and called for additional DEPB or other packages to motivate new entrepreneurs vying for such certificates. Saying further, he called for restoring earlier nomenclature of status houses as export house, trading house etc. rather than the current nomenclature of one, two, three or four star houses.
Suggesting measures to reduce the transaction cost, Mr. Deora proposed that a part of (roughly 1-3% according to sector and industry) FOB value should be directly credited to an exporter’s bank account alongwith his invoice value of export by debiting such payment to revenue department. He also suggested that the revenue saved out of Target Plus scheme should be paid to compensate exporter’s transaction cost as is done in China.
Mr. Deora brought to the notice of the Board Members that the shippers’ trade data with various government departments were being leaked or sold with full address, product, quantity, value, etc. and said such data were also being supplied to foreign competitors.
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Mr. Ramu Deora suggests....
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