Guardians of India's foreign trade now invite all to Serve from India

 The Dollar Business Bureau In a big boost to India’s services industry, the new Foreign Trade Policy (FTP), which was released by Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Nirmala Sitharaman, on Wednesday, has made duty credit scrips available to services exporters fully transferable. A long time demand of the services industry and an idea that The Dollar Business has long been advocating, the move will not only incentivise services exports, but will also increase the volume of trading in scrips. Earlier, services exports, which were incentivised under the Served from India Scheme (SFIS), used to provide exporters scrips that were not transferable. But under the new scheme – Service Exports from India Scheme (SEIS) – scrips are fully tradable. So, while earlier, for a service provider that has absolutely no needs for imports, the scrips were absolutely useless, transferability means that they (scrips) can now be sold for cash. Similarly, transferability of services scrips means that there will be more supply of scrips in the EXIM community, which has its own set of benefits. Another change in the new FTP, when it comes to services exports, is the fact that it is applicable to ‘service providers located in India’ and not ‘Indian service providers. This means even foreign service providers located in India are now eligible for the incentives and hence, the move can be considered as an extension of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet ‘Make in India’.    

This article was published on April 1, 2015.