Union Commerce, Industry and Textiles Minister Piyush Goyal on March 31, 2023 unveiled a new Foreign Trade Policy for the country that moves away from providing incentives to exporters but lowers a few costs for smaller firms, promises a one-time amnesty scheme for export obligation defaults.
ndia’s exports were $435 billion in 2015-16 when the previous policy was introduced and have grown nearly 75% to an estimated $760 billion in 2022-23, Director General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) Santosh Kumar Sarangi said.
“We have ensured there is no end-date to this policy to be able to update it as an when required. The approach of the new policy is to move from an incentive based regime to a remission of taxes regime,” he said.
Signalling that this is a learning from policy changes made since 2015 in response to emerging situations without announcing an overarching new framework, Mr. Sarangi emphasised that “sectors that feel that they haven’t got anything, need not be disappointed”.
The policy unveiled no major new schemes for exporters, barring a one-time amnesty scheme under the Advance authorisation and Export Promotion Capital Goods (EPCG) that allows imports of capital goods subject to specified export obligations.