Ease of doing business gets priority

The Centre on Wednesday said that the ease of doing business and digitisation were among the key focus areas in the new Foreign Trade Policy. It said one of its major initiatives is moving towards paperless working in a 24x7 environment.

Trade facilitation and ease of doing business is a priority to cut down transaction costs and time, and to make Indian exports more competitive. Recently the number of mandatory documents required for exports and imports was reduced to three, which, the Centre said, was comparable to international benchmarks.

“The focus of the new policy is to support both the manufacturing and services sectors, with a special emphasis on improving the ‘ease of doing business’. I believe, this policy would prove to be a catalyst in upscaling India’s position in global exports,” said Chandrajit Banerjee, Director-General, CII.

“Attention has also been paid to simplify various ‘Aayat Niryat’ Forms, bringing in clarity in different provisions, removing ambiguities and enhancing electronic governance,” said a statement by the Commerce Ministry.

The Centre also said that it has launched an “Approved Exporter System”, to speed up access of manufacturer exporters to international markets.

“Manufacturers, who are also status holders, will now be enabled to self-certify their manufactured goods in phases, as originating from India with a view to qualifying for preferential treatment under various forms of bilateral and regional trade agreements,” the official statement said.

Some of the other initiatives include setting up of an online complaint registration and monitoring system to assist exporters filing online applications on the DGFT portal or resolving other issues.

DGFT has also recently started the issue of Importer Exporter Code in electronic form (e-IEC). Applicants can upload documents and pay the required fee through net banking and get a digitally signed e-IEC.

In addition, it has also started an e-BRC (Electronic Bank Realisation Certificate) project, which will help capture details of realisation of export proceeds directly from the banks. This has facilitated the implementation of various export promotion schemes without any physical interface with the stakeholders.

“So far more than one crore e-BRCs have been captured by this system,” the statement said. The Centre has also signed MoUs with State governments for sharing of e-BRC data to facilitate refund of VAT to exporters.

COMMENT NOW