KOLKATA: With taxes on all fronts coming down progressively, the scope of benefiting Indian exporters and importers through refunds on and exemptions from indirect taxes is increasingly narrowing down.
Rather, time has come to improve and further streamline trade facilitation measures to cut down on cost and time overrun at different stages in pre and post-shipment processes.
This was strongly advocated by KT Chacko, director, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT) and former director general of foreign trade, while talking to ET. With plethora of refunds and exemption schemes already in place, exporters and importers of the country expect the government to put in place trade facilitation measures and duly announce them in the ensuing foreign trade policy for the next five years, he said.
Given this, it would be of more help to exporters and importers if the commerce ministry gets its act together to evolve a single framework for electronic data interchange (EDI) system, under which all government departments, which are in someway or other related to export and import of the country, could be brought together, suggested Mr Chacko.
Right now, the Customs and DGFT have established connectivity through EDI system to facilitate trade and avoid separate registration of importers and exporters at various custom houses. "But, this is not sufficient, because apart from these two entities, there are many other government departments, which too are involved in promoting the country’s external trade," said Mr Chacko.
As non-tariff barriers and non-tariff measures keep on changing across countries in the world, the time has come to put in place a mechanism, which should be equipped to closely monitor those changes on a real time basis, suggested Mr Chacko.
The same measure could be pursued in tracking the changes in standard input-output norms (SION), which also keeps on changing on a regular basis. To track these changes, IIFT has suggested to the commerce ministry to create a separate wing under DGFT. What is immediately required from the special wing is to digitise the entire spectrum on SION, and create an enabling digitised interactive platform on SION, he said.
What the government can do, without delay, is to involve more Indian embassies and other foreign offices abroad in promoting India's external trade. This can be done by opening up new commercial cells in those embassies which do not have those kind of cells at present. At the same time, these cells need to beefed up where they already exists, suggested Mr Chacko.
Source : The Economic Times