The Hindu Business Line : It is now `Served from India' scheme

THE Foreign Trade Policy 2004-2009, unveiled by the Commerce Minister, Mr Kamal Nath, has revamped and recast the earlier duty-free entitlement certificate (DFEC) scheme into `Served from India' scheme.

The new scheme seeks to create a powerful and unique `Served from India' brand that is instantly recognised and respected the world over.

Under the `Served from India' scheme, individual service providers who earn foreign exchange of at least Rs 5 lakh and other service providers who earn forex of at least Rs 10 lakh will be eligible for a duty credit entitlement of 10 per cent of the forex earned by them.

In the case of stand-alone restaurants, the entitlement would be 20 per cent, whereas in the case of hotels, it would be 5 per cent.

Hotels and restaurants can use their duty credit entitlements for import of food items and alcoholic beverages.

To accelerate the growth in export of services, the Government has also decided to set up a services export promotion council to map opportunities in key services in key markets and develop strategic market access programmes, including brand building in coordination with sectoral players and recognised nodal bodies of the services industry.

Further, Mr Kamal Nath announced that the Government would also promote establishment of common facility centres for use by home-based service providers, particularly in areas such as engineering and architectural design, multi-media operations, software developers etc in State and district level towns to draw in a vast multitude of home-based professionals into the services export arena.

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