New foreign trade policy brings good news for Indian exim community
India government announced a new Foreign Trade Policy on April 8' 2005, seeking to hike export turnover at record US Dollar 92 billion. With current year's export turnover touching a historic high growth of over 24% (US Dollar 80 bilion) - sentiments are high at Ministry of Commerce.
Announcing the Policy, Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath outlined a number of steps to streamline procedures and laid thrust on agri exports, marine export and continued drive on simplication of transactions.
Popular DEPB (Duty entitlement Passbook) Scheme will continue for the time being till a replacement scheme gets finalised.
Other significant measures are, proposal to abolish cess on exports of all agricultural and plantation commodities levied under the Commodity Board Act, benefits under the "Vishesh krishi upaj yojana" scheme announced last year would be extended to poultry and dairy and their value-added products, which would get duty credit at 5 per cent of the free-on-board value of the exports.
For manufacturing sector, new measures include : no safeguard and anti-dumping duty on inputs under advance licence for deemed export supplies made to international competitive bidding projects, waiving of balance export obligation for the exporters completing 75 per cent of their export obligation in half the prescribed tenure under the Export Promotion Capital Goods (EPCG) scheme and reduced export obligation and enhanced time available for exports under the EPCG scheme for the imports made by the agriculture sector.
A reduced obligation at six times the duty saved amount as against the normal eight times for imports made by the small-scale industrial sector under the EPCG scheme in a bid to upgrade technology and modernisation has been put in place.
To facilitate modernisation of the retail sector, Mr Kamal Nath said that concessional duty benefits under the EPCG scheme would be extended for import of capital goods required by retailers with a minimum covered shopping area of 1,000 sq m. The proposed move, he said, would help India compete with the best retail stores in Malaysia and Singapore.
To overcome the problem of port congestion that contributes substantially to transaction cost to exporters, a new initiative aimed at reducing congestion at major ports has been announced. Thus, the facility of export obligation discharged in rupee payment under the EPCG has been extended to the minor ports, inland container depots and container freight stations.
To boost marine sector, which has been hit by the recent tsunami tragedy, a special package allowing duty-free import of specified inputs based on the past export performance, import of mono filament long line system for tuna fishing at concessional duty and a self-removal procedure for clearance of perishable waste has been announced.
Here's full-text of New Foreign Trade Policy and 2005 Supplement
April 8' 2005
