Exporters to get Rs 56,027 crore against pending tax refunds

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The government will release Rs 56,027 crore to exporters against pending tax refunds under different incentive schemes for outbound shipments. The amount will be disbursed to more than 45,000 exporters, commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal said on Thursday.

Goyal said that the Rs 56,027 crore, which is being released is over and above duty remission of Rs 12,454 crore for the Remission of Duties and Taxes on Export Products (RoDTEP) Scheme and Rs 6,946 crore for Rebate of State and Central Levies and Taxes (RoSCTL) Scheme already announced.

“So in effect, exporters will be cleared all their old dues plus another Rs 19,500 crore for the current year. Both of which aggregating about Rs 75,000 crore as liquidity will be made available to our exporters,” he said adding all the amount will be cleared this year.

This amount includes claims relating to MEIS (Merchandise Export India Scheme), SEIS (Service Exports India Scheme), RoSL (Rebate of State Levies), RoSCTL, other scrip based schemes relating to earlier policies and the remission support for RoDTEP and RoSCTL for exports made in the fourth quarter of 2020-21.  The amount of Rs 56,027 crore 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 etc (Rs 4,831 crore), it said.

Cash flow

Goyal said the move would help exporters maintain cash flow and help meet their growing export demand and also help the country achieve $400 billion target for this fiscal.

“This decision to clear all pending export incentives within this financial year will lead to even more rapid export growth in coming months,” he said.

Service sector exporters, including in travel, tourism and hospitality segments, will be able to claim SEIS benefits for FY2019-2020, for which Rs 2,061 crore has been provisioned.  This support is expected to have a multiplier effect and push employment generation.

Apparel sector arrears

The apparel sector will 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.

Export claims relating to earlier years will have to be filed by the December 31, 2021 after 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 the Ministry of Finance to monitor provisioning and disbursement of the export incentives under a budgetary framework.

On container shortage and high freight rate issue being faced by the exporters, he said an inter-ministerial meeting was held on Thursday and “ideas have come, and that will be examined and studied by different ministries”.

Former president of Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) S K Saraf said that the delay in payments has affected cash flow of exporters, particularty in MSME sector.

“This payment will be a great relief to exporters in these challenging times. I hope this payment is made expeditiously. It will save a lot of MSME from a certain extinction,” Saraf said.