Government of India
Ministry of Commerce and Industry
Department of Commerce
Directorate General of Foreign Trade
Udyog Bhawan, New Delhi
Policy - 4 Division
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Policy Circular No. 23/2015-20
Dated: 15th May 2019
To
All Regional
Authorities of DGFT
All Exporters/Members of Trade
Subject: Non-requirement of submission of Hard Copy of application at RAs for
issue of Advance Authorisation (A A) & EPCG Authorisation
Attention is invited to Para 4.02(ii) of HBP 2015-20 which
explicitly states that "Applicant shall upload documents as prescribed in ANF
4A, if any, at the time of online filing of application. No physical copy of
application is required to be submitted to Regional Authority." However it has
been observed that almost every RA asks for the hard copy of the application and
Advance Authorisation / EPCG is processed on receipt of hard copy only. Main
reason was that facility to upload documents in the online ECOM application was
not available.
2. To remove the time lag between online application and receipt of hard copy in
the DGFT Regional Authority (RA), NIC has now created an 'upload document'
facility in the Advance Authorisation & EPCG ECOM modules.
3. Therefore with effect from 20th Mav 2019. all exporters filing online AA &
EPCG applications will, in addition, need to upload supporting documents also as
prescribed in ANF/FTP/HBP. With the use of this facility, exporters will not be
required to submit hard copy of the AA/EPCG application and its related
documents to the DGFT RA.
4. RAs would examine/process such ECOM applications based on the information &
documents filed online by the exporter and issue AA/EPCG within the laid down
timelines of 3 working days.
5. In cases where the basic prescribed documents have not been uploaded online
by the exporter or in exceptional cases where additional document/information is
needed for further clarity or decision making, RA may issue an online deficiency
letter. Exporter can log in the Online ECOM module and view the deficiency
raised online. Although the exporter can submit the reply in writing at the RA
counter/post but for a quick response from the RA. it is desirable that exporter
also submits the deficiency reply by email to the official email id of the
concerned RA [with RA File no. in the subject line) along with necessary scanned
documents as attachments.
6. Exporters may note that, after issue of Advance Authorisation under Para
4.07 of the Hand Book of Procedures, 2015-20 (Self declared Authorisations where
SION does not exist) it is now the responsibility of the applicants to send two
(2) sets of complete application [along with the PDF copy of AA, Appendix 4E,
production/consumption data etc. and other related documents which will help in
fixation of ad-hoc norms] directly to the FTDO of the concerned Norms
Committee (NC) in the o/o DGFT, Udyog Bhawan, New Delhi-110011 for
ratification/fixation of the norms. Details of Norms Committee(s) along with
products groups dealt by each Norms Committee are laid down in Para 4.06 (i) of
Hand Book of Procedures, 2015-20. In case, the application details are not made
available by the exporter applicant to the concerned NC on time, the process of
fixation of ad-hoc norms will get delayed. Non¬availability of application with
supporting documents beyond a reasonable period of say 2 months will lead to
rejection of the case by the Norms Committee.
This issues with the approval of DGFT.
(Vijay Kumar)
Additional Director General, Foreign Trade
(Issued from file no. 1/94/180/026/AM20/PC-4)