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G. Srinivasan

Mr L. Mansingh, DGFT

NEW DELHI, Oct. 17

THE officers of the Directorate-General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) have been told to facilitate exports by troubleshooting for the exporting community, according to the new Director-General, Mr L. Mansingh.

In a wide-ranging interview to Business Line here on his organisation in the aftermath of the removal of import curbs, he said that "from a negative regulatory body under an extremely restrictive export-import (Exim) policy when everything required an import licence in the 1990s, the DGFT and its regional offices have undergone a dramatic transformation to act as a facilitator and troubleshooter for the exporting community now.''

He said that export facilitation is the new mantra for the DGFT. As the Commerce Ministry does not have a presence in the States, "we are the only organisation of the Ministry which is spread across the country. We are there in almost every State capital and in major exporting States, we have more than one office. Right now we have 32 offices in the country.''

Stating that the DGFT would "leverage'' this presence by acting as a "facilitator", he said that "the officers have been told to facilitate exports by troubleshooting for the exporting community anywhere it occurs — it can be with ports, revenue department or local agency. If it cannot be sorted out locally, we want them to be brought to our notice as quickly as possible so that the necessary intervention can take place''.

To that end, he said, "We have recently called a port officers' conference mid-term when normally it is called once a year after the policy is unveiled on March 31." The clear message to the officer is that "you are the friend, philosopher and guide for the exporters at the local level and at the cutting edge''. They were "quite enthusiastic" about the task on hand and gave some suggestions and concerns which would be "taken care of", he added.

Mr Mansingh said that "our import licensing work has come down significantly and what is now taking up a lot of time and attention is the duty neutralisation schemes''. It was recognised earlier that "if you have to be globally competitive, you must get the inputs at international cost prices or as nearly as it is possible. Consciously, we have many schemes for neutralising the duty factors of things which have been imported to go into value-added exports so that they are competitive," he said.

"Even if you are not importing, there is a level playing field to be created and that all elements of direct and indirect taxes going into the export promotion are also neutralised." For that a number of schemes have been introduced with the objective being that the exporters get a choice from a menu of schemes, depending on their convenience and requirements they opt for a scheme, he said, adding that nearly 80 per cent of exports from India are covered by one scheme or the other.

Mr Mansingh said that some "vestiges'' of restrictions remain in foreign trade based on statutory provisions and national interests, though by and large the trade front is free from curbs. Even canalised trade items are also at very low level as "we adopt a fairly liberal approach'', he pointed out.

Asked about the continued monitoring of sensitive items whose surge would be inimical to domestic industry, the DGFT said that by and large the 300 sensitive items of imports had not shown any exceptional surge. It might appear that items such as kiwi fruit and frozen turkey import would have increased. Considering that these products have no domestic base, any meagre volume import of these items would get magnified, he said adding that "sensitivity should be judged with reference to the production base''.

He said that the authorities were trying to fine-tune the system so that ``monitoring is far more scientific and effective'' and here the lack of timely data was a problem. He said that Customs still adopted six-digit classification while DGFT was following eight-digit classification.

Besides, out of 103 customs point only 23 are EDI (electronic data interchange) ports and, hence, efforts are on to fully introduce EDI in the remaining points and harmonise commodity classification to eight-digit level to minimise misclassification and delay in receipt of data from ports.

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