Industry welcomes DGFT’s move on reduction of docs for exports and imports

Jayarama Emani| The Dollar Business The recent move by the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) to reduce the mandatory documents required for import and export of goods to three each received a positive response from the industry circles. Speaking to The Dollar Business, Ajay Sahai, Director General & CEO of Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) said, “The reduction of export and import documents from seven to three and 10 to three respectively will not only reduce the transaction time and cost but will send the right signal to both domestic and foreign investors that government is keen to ease the business processes. Such a move will help India to improve its ranking in Trading Across Border segment of Doing Business Report.” However, Sahai also added that, “The government has to ensure that the field formation authorities do not introduce additional documents to meet the so called local requirement which will tantamount to nullifying such a gain to industry.” Welcoming the new development, highly placed sources in the office of the Seafood Exporters' Association of India, from Visakhapatnam said “It is a variety reduction measure by the government both for the importers and exporters. A positive and proactive step towards bringing ‘Ease of Doing Business’. The merging of invoice and packing documents is a great move. The reduction in the list of documents should help India climb up the ladder from the 126th position as regards ‘trading across the border’ component. Krishna Prasad, CEO & Director, Cito Healthcare (P) Ltd., said “For the pharma industry, limiting documents to three for exports and imports means that foreign trade is getting liberalised in terms of redundant documentation. This would definitely boost foreign investments into India. Industries based on low volume and high value products such as pharmaceuticals pertaining to rare diseases, orphan drugs especially and possibly some new chemical entities research too would get a fillip as India scales down its bureaucracy hurdles. The challenge however lies in adherence to statutory and regulatory compliances as per the guidelines.” In a significant move that will improve India’s ranking significantly in ‘Trading Across Borders’ component of ‘Ease of Doing Business’, the Government of India has reduced the mandatory documents required for import and export of goods to three document each. The Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) issued a Notification to this effect yesterday.  

This article was published on March 13, 2015.