EPCG, DFIA to Go Online Soon: DGFT
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Mr. S.K. Jain, Chairman, FIEO(ER) addressing the addressing the participants. On the dais from left, are Ms. Anima Pandey, Regional Director, EEPC(ER); Mr. R.P. Sehgal, Chairman, EEPC(ER); Mr. R.S.Gujral, DGFT; Dr. S.S. Agarwal, Addl. DGFT. |
One by one, the DGFT is planning to make all export promotion schemes online. In an Open House with more than 130 exporters at Kolkata on 5th October, Director General of Foreign Trade Mr. R.S. Gujral said that the EPCG scheme would be made online within next 45 days and the DFIA scheme by the end of the year. With regard to the problems faced by exporters in online dealing with of DEPB scheme, he assured that soon the problem would be sorted out. Regarding exemption of duties on samples imported, he requested FIEO to provide clarification papers for due consideration.
Addressing the Open House, jointly organized by the eastern region offices of FIEO and Engineering Export Promotion Council, Mr. Gujral made a categorical view that all state taxes and levies should be factored in duty neutralization schemes to give relief to the exporters. "States should also look into how to rebate unrelated levies and taxes;" he stressed.
With regard to the laid-back attitude of the banks in honouring recent RBI guidelines on reducing BPLR, Mr. Gujral assured that the DGFT would take up the issue with the the concerned authority in the coming week. Meanwhile, he said, to insulate exports from the vagaries of market driven exchange rates, bodies like FIEO and EEPC should come with some out of box solutions.
Earlier, while welcoming the participants to the Open House, the Eastern Region Chairman of FIEO Mr. S. K. Jain drew the attention of Mr. Gujral towards poor infrastructure, logistic problem, high transaction cost, cumbersome process of VAT refund etc.
The Eastern Region Chairman of EEPC, Mr. R. P.Sehgal in his address highlighted the problems faced by exporters of engineering goods in the eastern region with regard to high port charges at Haldia and escalating shipping costs. Regarding VAT, he said, the West Bengal government is yet to commence the process of its refund to exporters and a sum of Rs. 34 crore was pending with the Deptt. of Commercial Taxes of the state.
Leather exporters attending the Open House submitted that they were facing problems related to DFIA and Focus Product Scheme. They said: "Some of the exporters received DFIA authorizations during licensing period 2006-07. As per the terms and conditions of the FTP in Para 4.4.2, the pre-export authorization shall be issued with Actual user condition and shall be exempted from payment of basic customs duty, additional customs duty, educational cess, anti-dumping duty and safeguard duty, etc, if any. The same has been amended on 19th April, 2007 and the condition of payment of additional customs duty has been stipulated on transferability of DFIA license. However, the RLA says that this was leviable on all licenses, including previous licenses issued by the office of DGFT."
They further submitted: "Industrial leather gloves and finished leather do not fall under the purview of Central Excise Tariff. All the export challans till 19th April 2007 were cleared under DFIA scheme and no drawback claims can be made on the basis of excise paid for other inputs. However, the implication of the amendment in the Policy w.e.f 19th April 2007 suggests that the exporters will lose all excise duties paid by them on inputs used for export production." They sought exemption from payment of additional customs duties and other similar duties pleading that leather exporters did not fall under the purview of the excise duties. Mr. Gujral assured to discuss the matter with concerned DGFT officials.
Another group of exporters said that Allied ICD services was the only ICD in the private sector in Eastern India and was burdened with catering to a large number of predominantly export oriented industries located in and around Durgapur and Asansol. They requested that ICD Durgapur should be allowed to import metallic wastes and scraps in unshredded compresses and loose forms. The DGFT assured to look into the matter.
Merchant exporters drew the attention of Mr. Gujral to the Public Notice no.19 issued by the DGFT in the month of July this year allowing agricultural exporters duty credit upto 10% for importing capital goods related to agriculture or food processing industry. As the duty credit is not transferable, they said, most of them were deprived of the benefits of the scheme. They requested the DGFT to consider transferability of duty credit licences. The DGFT assured to examine the issue.
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A view of the participants. |
Some exporters said that they were granted Advance Licence against VALUE BASED ADVANCE LICENCE under provisions of the DGFT Notification No. 203/92 dated 19/05/1992. However, later, the office of the ZJDGFT, Kolkata asked for quantitative details of imported LDPE, which they said, was not justified and was contrary to provisions of EXIM POLICY and the said Notification. The DGFT assured to clarify the issue within a week.
Mr. Gujral was accompanied by Dr. S. S. Agarwal, Addl. DGFT and Mr. P. Halder, ZJDGFT, Kolkata and his other subordinates while interacting with exporters.
While summing up the proceedings of the Open House, FIEO DDG of Eastern Region, Mr. Tapan Chattopadhyaya informed that the Federation would be soon holding a similar interaction for the exporters of Orissa at Bhubaneswar and requested Mr. Gujral to join it.
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SGS assures to issue CRFs on priority In a meeting with exporters at Kolkata on 12th September, 2007 SGS officials admitted that there were some delays in issuing Certificates of Clear Findings (CRFs) in the previous months due to systems upgradation that was being carried out by them, but they assured that now the certificates were being issued on top priority. They were responding to the observation made by FIEO Managing Committee Member Mr. Pravin Saraf that the delay in issuing CRFs was adding to the transaction cost of exporters in the form of demurrages. Mr. Saraf suggested SGS officials, led by Branch Manager (Eastern Region), Mr. K. R. V. S. Mehar, that in the event of such inevitable delays in future, provisional certificates should be issued to exporters to enable them ship their merchandise on time. Mr. Saraf also suggested that during such exigencies SGS should coordinate with the National Board of Revenue, Bangladesh to save exporters from suffering for no fault of theirs. Bangladesh Government has authorized SGS to issue such certificates to Indian exporters after inspecting their export merchandise. Exporters present in the meeting requested SGS to educate them on various benchmarks being used to check quality, valuation, description of goods, etc. so that they knew in advance what information they needed to furnish with the agency for carrying out the inspection of export merchandise. |
