Govt will clear Rs 56,000 crore export promotion dues this year

Dues worth Rs 56,000 crore claims will be cleared, Piyush Goyal, Union Minister for Commerce and Industry said at a press conference on Thursday. A report by Krishnanand Tripathi, Deputy News Editor, ETV Bharat.

New Delhi:In a big relief to the exporting community that has been reeling under pressure due to a surge in freight rates and shipping capacity constraints the government Thursday announced that it will clear all past and present dues of different export promotion schemes run by the Central government in the current financial year. Commerce and Industries Minister Piyush Goyal said total dues worth Rs 56,000 crore will be cleared in the current fiscal as finance ministry has already made provision for it.

Goyal said claims worth Rs 56,027 crore will be cleared that will help address the cash-flow problem of small and medium sized exporters.

“Almost in all sectors, this will come as a very big relief,” Goyal told reporters in New Delhi.

The minister said the amount of Rs 56,000 crore is over and above duty remission amount of Rs 12,454 crore for the RoDTEP scheme and Rs 6,946 crore for RoSCTL scheme already announced for exports made in the current financial year ending in March next year.

“In effect the exporters will be cleared all their old dues plus another Rs 19,500 crore for the current year, both of which aggregating about Rs 75,000 crore as liquidity will be made available to our exporters,” said the minister.

“It will truly a transformational impact on our exporters' cash flows,” noted the minister.

The amount of Rs 56,000 crore includes claims relating to MEIS, SEIS, RoSL, RoSCTL, other scrip based schemes relating to earlier policies and the remission support for RoDTEP and RoSCTL for exports made in the 4th quarter of the last fiscal year.

Benefits would be disbursed to more than 45,000 exporters, out of which about 98% are small exporters in the MSME category.

Out of this more than Rs 56,000 crore dues, the biggest chunk would go to the MEIS scheme (Rs 33,010 crore), followed by the SEIS (Rs 10,002 crore), RoSCTL (Rs 5,286 cr), RoSL (Rs 330 crore). It will also include RoDTEP schemes dues estimated at Rs 2,568 crore, and other legacy schemes like target plus etc at Rs 4,831 crore.

Special portal for claiming export promotion dues

The government will set-up a separate portal for exporters to claim the export promotion scheme dues.

Export claims relating to earlier years will need to be filed by the exporters by December end beyond which they will become time barred.

“The specific 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 provisioning and disbursement of the export incentives under a budgetary framework,” said the government.

The last date for making an application will be December 31 and the government aims to clear all the dues by March next year.

Growing export amid a global pandemic

The relief comes at a time when Indian exporters have been performing well despite the twin challenges of Covid-19 global pandemic induced supply chain disruptions and a sharp increase in shipping cost due to capacity constraints.

According to official data, India's merchandise exports for April-August period this year was nearly $164 billion, which is an increase of 67% over 2020-21 and 23% over 2019-20 when the Covid-19 pandemic had not hit the country.

“This decision to clear all pending export incentives within this financial year, will lead to even more rapid export growth in coming months and spur employment,” said the government.