In a major relief for exporters, the Centre has decided to immediately release all their pending dues under various incentive and duty reimbursement schemes, worth a total of ₹56,027 crore, Commerce & Industry Minister Piyush Goyal has said.

This is in addition to ₹12,454 crore reimbursement under the new Remission of Duties and Taxes on Exported Products (RoDTEP) and ₹6,946 crore under the Rebate of State and Central taxes and Levies (RoSCTL) for garments and made up already announced for the current year, the Minister said.

“A total of ₹75,000 crore additional liquidity will be made available to exporters this fiscal. This will have a transforming effect on their cash flow,” Goyal said at a press briefing on Thursday, pointing out that the decisions had been taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman responding to exporters’ concerns.

Goods exports for April-August, 2021, at about $164 billion, registered an increase of 67 per cent over 2020-21 and 23 per cent over 2019-20. In the first seven days of September 2021, exports were valued at $7.5 billion showing that they were continuing to move on the growth path, Goyal said.

“This decision will lead to even more rapid export growth in coming months,” he added. As many as 45,000 exporters will benefit from the government’s decision, of which about 98 per cent exporters are from the MSME sector, Goyal said.

Big relief for MSMEs

Exporters, who have been pressing for release of their dues for long, are greatly relieved. “It would benefit majorly the exporters in the MSME category, which will boost the sentiments of the small exporters and help them to expand their export horizons and connect well with the global value chains,” said Sanjay Aggarwal, President, PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

The pending payments to be released include ₹33,010 crore worth of dues under the Merchandise Export from India Scheme (which was replaced by RoDTEP from January 1, 2021), ₹10,002 crore under the Services Export from India Scheme (SEIS), ₹5,286 crore under RoSCTL and RoSL schemes, ₹2,568 crore under RoDTEP for the January 1-March 31, 2021 period, and ₹4,831 crore for other legacy schemes like the Target Plus scheme.

For merchandise exports, all sectors covered under MEIS, such as pharmaceuticals, iron and steel, engineering, chemicals, fisheries, agriculture and allied sectors, auto and auto components would be able to claim benefits for exports made in earlier years. Service sector exporters, including those in the travel, tourism and hospitality segments, will be able to claim SEIS benefits for 2019-2020, for which ₹2,061 crore has been provisioned.

Export claims relating to earlier years will need to be filed by exporters by December 31, 2021. “The online IT portal will be enabled shortly to accept MEIS and other scrip-based applications and would be integrated with a robust mechanism set up by the Ministry of Finance to monitor the provisioning and disbursement of the export incentives under a budgetary framework,” said an official release.

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