The Hindu Business Line : AEPC to cut membership, endorsement charges

THE Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC), in a pursuit to broaden its exporter-friendly role further in a quota-free regime next year, has proposed to reduce its membership fee and shipping bill endorsement charges.

The council has proposed the fee reduction to cut down the transaction cost incurred from garment shipments and encourage shippers exporting non-restrained items to non-quota markets to file their export details with the council.

Filing of non-quota/non-restrained items export details by shippers assumes importance as the textile/apparel sectors are faced with a quota phase-out shortly.

In the post-quota period, gathering export statistics would become vital not only for the exporting community but also for the Government to follow the status on the export/import front to deal with anti-dumping and anti-subsidy issues.

According to knitwear export industry sources in Tirupur, shipments of non-quota items or exports made to non-quota markets do not require the AEPC endorsement.

The sources said the AEPC had proposed that the existing membership fee collected by the council be brought down by over 70 per cent from Rs 7,000 (Rs 6,000 in case of registered exporters) to Rs 2,000.

As for shipping document endorsement charges, the council has produced a flat Rs 150 per shipment instead of the present per-piece rate, which ranges from 5 paise to 15 paise (an average of Rs 456 per endorsement).

The sources also said the AEPC had been attempting to introduce an online shipping document endorsement, which would obviate the need for exporters visiting the AEPC to have endorsement for which the council would put in place the needed systems for online endorsement.