The new Foreign Trade Policy has put in place a new ‘Services Exports from India’ scheme to increase exports of notified services, replacing older schemes. The new scheme has different conditions for eligibility and usage, with higher incentives for priority sectors.

Under the new scheme, the duty-free scrips earned by exporters are not attached with any conditions.

“Duty credit scrips issued under MEIS (Merchandise Exports from India Scheme) and SEIS (Services Exports from India Scheme) and the goods imported against these scrips are fully transferable,” the Minister said.

This has been a long-standing demand of services exporters. Several sectors could not use the duty exemption scrips as they did not import any inputs. The full transferability of the scrips will now enable exporters to pay other input taxes and also sell to other importers.

For grant of rewards under MEIS, the countries have been categorized into 3 groups, whereas the rates of rewards under MEIS range from 2 per cent to 5 per cent. Under SEIS the selected Services would be rewarded at the rates of 3 per cent and 5 per cent.

“We had been getting representations from various sectors including the civil aviation stating that they could not use the scrips so far. The new provisions would solve their problems,” said Director General of Foreign Trade Pravir Kumar.

Exporters are, however, disappointed as the quantum of incentive has gone down from 10 per cent.

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