In their Year End Review 2023 for Department of Commerce, Ministry of Commerce and Industry highlighted their Foreign Trade Policy (FTP) 2023 and recollected its’ salient feature encourage exports India. Initially, Foreign Trade Policy 2023 (FTP 2023) was launched on 31st March 2023 in New Delhi by the Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, Shri Piyush Goyal.
The Key Approach to the policy is based on these 4 pillars: (i) Incentive to Remission, (ii) Export promotion through collaboration – Exporters, States, Districts & Indian Missions. (iii) Ease of doing business, reduction in transaction cost and e-initiatives and (iv) Emerging Areas – E-Commerce Developing Districts as Export Hubs and streamlining SCOMET policy.
It focuses on emerging areas like dual use high end technology items under SCOMET, facilitating e-commerce export, collaborating with States and Districts for export promotion. The new FTP is introducing a one-time Amnesty Scheme for exporters to close the old pending authorizations and start afresh. The FTP 2023 encourages recognition of new towns through Towns of Export Excellence Scheme and exporters through Status Holder Scheme.
The Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), Ministry of Commerce and Industry implemented the Advance Authorisation Scheme under the FTP 2023, which allows duty-free import of inputs for export purposes. To make the norms fixation process more efficient, the DGFT has created a user-friendly and searchable database of Ad-hoc Norms fixed in the previous years. These norms can be used by any exporter without requiring a Norms Committee review as outlined in the FTP 2023.
An initiative to issue system based automatic, Status Holder certificates under FTP 2023 was launched on 9th October 2023. Now the exporter will not be required to apply to the office of DGFT for a Status Certificate and the export recognition will be provided by the IT system based on available Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCIS) merchandise export electronic data and other risk parameters.
This perspective is a paradigm shift in doing things as it not only reduces compliance burden and promotes ease of doing business but also recognizes the need and importance of collaboration within the Government. The Status Holder certification program provides credibility to the Indian exporters in the international markets.
In addition, it provides certain other privileges including simplified procedures under FTP 2023 and priority custom clearances on self-declaration basis, exemption from compulsory negotiation of documents through banks, exemption from filing Bank Guarantee for FTP schemes etc.