The mid-term review of the Foreign Trade Policy (FTP) has brought in additional relief worth an annual Rs 8450 crore for the labour-intensive and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) sectors.

Exporters of labour-intensive items will now be eligible for 2 per cent higher incentives across-the-board under the popular Merchandise Export from India Scheme (MEIS), as per the review released by Commerce and Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu on Tuesday.

"The additional incentives announced today, together with the higher rates offered recently to garments and made-ups, would result in an additional outgo of Rs 8450 crore per year," the Director General of Foreign Trade Alok Chaturvedi said.

The government has also introduced a new trust based self ratification system to allow duty free inputs for export production on the basis of self declaration.

The incentives come at a time when exporters are struggling under the implementation-related issues of the Goods & Services Tax (GST) introduced in July.

Prabhu said the FTP package announcement was not a one-time exercise to help exporters. "It is an on-going effort. We will continuously revisit issues, identify challenges and addressing them on a real-time basis," the Minister said.

Accepting that exporters had suffered due to implementation related problems of GST, Prabhu said that the government will sort it out together with exporters. "No new legislation can be made perfect in one go. I ask exporters to please bear with us and be our partners in dealing with the problems," he said.

An e-wallet system to address the liquidity problem being faced by exporters is likely to be operational from April 1 2018, PK Das, Member, CBEC, assured exporters.

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