Centre to release Rs 56,027 cr to exporters

New Delhi [India], September 9 : With an aim to boost cash flow in the export sector, the central government will release Rs 56,027 crore to exporters under various export promotion schemes.
Addressing the mediapersons, Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal said, "Centre has decided to budget Rs 56,027 crore in this Financial Year FY 21-22 itself in order to disburse all pending export incentives due to exporters. The release of pending dues will have a transformational impact. Benefits would be disbursed to more than 45,000 exporters, out of which about 98 per cent are small exporters in the MSME category. This will be a big relief for them as it will help them maintain cash flow."
He said all pending dues amounting to Rs 56,027 crore are under various export incentive schemes like MEIS, SEIS, RoSL, RoSCTL and RoDTEP to be released in this FY 21-22.
"We met our global commitments even through the pandemic. This has helped India become a trusted partner globally. With the will, synergy and agility of our stakeholders, we will convert this crisis into an opportunity and prosperity for the country. With these measures, our exporters will have a level playing field to compete with global players and help achieve aggressive targets that have been set," Goyal emphasised.
According to Ministry of Commerce and Industry, the amount of Rs 56,027 crores of arrears is for different export promotion and remission schemes: MEIS (Rs 33,010 crore), SEIS (Rs 10,002 crore), RoSCTL (Rs 5,286 cr), RoSL (Rs 330 crore), RoDTEP (Rs 2,568 crore), other legacy schemes like Target Plus (Rs 4,831 crore). This amount is over and above the 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 FY 2021-22.
The union minister said exports in India have seen robust growth in recent months. Merchandise exports for April-August, 2021 was nearly USD 164 billion, which is an increase of 67 per cent over 2020-21 and 23 per cent over 2019-20.
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 FY 2019-2020, for which Rs 2,061 crore has been provisioned. The apparel sector, which is a major labour-intensive sector, would get past arrears under ROSCTL and ROSL, and all stakeholders in the interconnected supply chains would be strengthened to meet the festive season demand in international markets, union ministry said.
Goyal said that export claims relating to earlier years will need to be filed by the exporters by December 31, 2021 beyond which they will become time-barred. 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 Ministry of Finance to monitor provisioning and disbursement of the export incentives under a budgetary framework.