Indian exports to Nepal hit by Customs hurdles: EEPC

NEW DELHI: Indian exports to Nepal have been badly hit due to the Customs Department's insistence on a Bank Realisation Certificate (BRC) from exporters for claiming drawbacks refunds, even as banks have stopped issuing BRCs on specific instructions from the DGFT, according to EEPC India.

"This is a classic case of the left hand in the government not knowing or pretending to be not knowing what the right hand is doing. In this avoidable bargain, exporters are sufferers with the result that the country is losing precious market in Nepal, which is then going to China," EEPC India Chairman Anupam Shah said.

Continuous correspondence with the authorities in the different departments has so far proved futile while shipments of important goods to Nepal have suffered setbacks, Shah said.

According to the engineering exporters' body, even as the Customs department has been insisting on a BRC from exporters, banks receiving foreign exchange remittances on behalf of exporters have stopped issuing BRCs on instructions from the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT).

In February 2009, the Central Board of Excise and Customs ( CBEC) had done away with the system of submission of BRCs and only a Chartered Accountant Certificate was sufficient to verify drawback claims received by the exporters, Shah said.

"While Raxaul port (used for exports to Nepal) has become a partial EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) port from April 2013, the Customs is insisting on manual BRCs, creating a difficult situation for exporters," Shah said.

Customs in Raxual have also rejected the idea of e-BRCs certified by banks in lieu of manual BRCs, he added.

Engineering exports to Nepal in 2012-13 aggregated $753 million.