Directorate General of Foreign Trade sets target to go faceless in a year

By Shailesh Yadav
New Delhi [India], August 28 : After the grand success of the Faceless Assessment Scheme of the Income Tax Department, now Commerce and Industry Ministry is also going to implement this scheme in its department.
Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) is responsible for formulating and implementing the Foreign Trade Policy to become faceless in a year, top sources in Commerce Ministry told ANI.
The Commerce Ministry will be the second ministry to adopt the Faceless Scheme after Finance Ministry.
The Commerce and Industry Minister discussed this with the officials of the ministry. After the broad discussion one-year timeline has been set for DGFT to go into complete faceless mode like the Income Tax Department, said a top official in DGFT.
The central government introduced the Faceless Assessment Scheme to provide greater transparency, efficiency and accountability in Income Tax assessments.
In the Union Budget 2019, the Finance Minister proposed the introduction of a scheme of faceless e-assessment. The scheme aims to eliminate the human interface between the taxpayer and the income tax department.
The scheme lays down the procedure to carry out a faceless assessment through electronic mode. The E-assessment scheme was amended to the faceless assessment scheme and it was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on August 13, 2020. 58,319 cases were selected for faceless assessment in the first lot.
DGFT also issues scrips/authorisation to exporters and monitors their corresponding obligation through a network of 24 regional offices.
Sources told ANI that the faceless operation of DGFT will reduce the cost of office expenses, work and approval-related interaction with the exporters will be done through video/virtual conference mode, which will save time.
The direction to implement the faceless operation of DGFT has been given by top-level officials of the Commerce Ministry.