'Teething troubles' hold up exporters tax benefits under RoDTEP scheme: Commerce secretary

Commerce secretary Anup Wadhawan on Monday said a few 'teething troubles' are holding up the government from notifying the tax refund rates and the rollout of the Remission of Duties and Taxes on Exported Products (RoDTEP). He said these ‘teething troubles’ will be over soon and exporters would get the benefits of the scheme January 1, 2021 onwards.

“The entire roadmap is clear and benefits will be available from January 1, 2021...it is just a matter of a few weeks’ teething issues. They’ll be behind us very soon but exporters know what to expect. They know it is a benefit that will come from January 1,” Wadhawan said.

The scheme, which replaced the Merchandise Exports from India Scheme, is yet to be implemented because of absence of rate of benefits. The refund rates for various product categories are yet to be finalised by the finance ministry and commerce ministry.


The Budget 2021-22 announced an initial allocation of Rs 13,000 crore for the RoDTEP but the finance ministry had announced an outlay of Rs 50,000 crore in 2019.

The RoDTEP will reimburse input taxes and duties paid by exporters, including embedded taxes, such as local levies, coal cess, mandi tax, electricity duties and fuel used for transportation, which are not exempted or refunded under any other existing scheme.

Export districts
On the issue of districts as an export hub initiative, Director General of Foreign Trade Amit Yadav said products and services with export potential have been identified in 725 of the 745 total districts in the country.

In his independence day speech in 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had called to make each district of the country into an export hub.

As per an official statement, in the next 3 to 5 years, it is targeted that export growth of double digits is registered from 500 Districts of the country, with significant growth in the exports of identified products/services from each district.

“District wise baseline data has been started from September 2020 onwards. This will help in monitoring the progress made in terms of export performance from the districts,” DGFT said.

The DGFT added that institutional mechanism in the form of separate export promotion councils at state and district levels are being created to address the bottlenecks for export growth. Specific action plans to boost outbound trade is also being finalized by them in each district, with draft action plans having been prepared by DGFT's regional authorities in 451 districts.

Ease of trading
The DGFT said with newer IT systems to be rolled out in a phased manner by March 2021, a virtual DGFT Offices would be faceless, contactless and paperless and reduced physical location of offices is also being planned.

“DGFT would be transformed further into more trade promotion roles so that it acts as a single-window for trade promotion activities,” it said in statement.

As for e-governance, Yadav said the department is working on a module for its internal working and in coming weeks which will lead to paperless and contactless working.

Wadhawan said," In a very short timeframe, the entire gamut of the DGFT’s approval processes including issuance of rules of origin certificates by the Export Inspection Council, have become paperless and online."

Almost all schmes under the DGFT, applications processing, approval process is paperless, and even the scrips and all which are issued are electronic and are electronically processed and implemented, he said.

“DGFT has undertaken initiatives to route all trade related formalities through a single online portal, simplification of procedures for trade clearance related activities and paperless filing of documents,” DGFT said in the statement.

E-issuance of licences for import/export of restricted items and Online Platform for e- issuance of Preferential Certificates of Origin are some of initiatives to ease of trading across borders and help India break into the top 50 in the World Bank’s Doing Business ranking.