Govt heightens export licence application scrutiny

The Union government has intensified the scrutiny of export licence applications after it received communication from the US and some European countries that some of the items exported are allegedly used by some countries to make weapons of mass destruction (WMD), L Mansingh, director general of foreign trade (DGFT), said.

This has resulted in considerable delay in issuing export licences to a certain class of goods, Mansingh said at an interactive session on review of the Export-Import Policy 2002-07 on Tuesday.

Mansingh said the government has received official communication from the US government and some European countries that certain items exported from India were allegedly used by the erstwhile Saddam Hussain regime in Iraq for manufacturing weapons of mass destruction.

Mansingh said while the process of issuing export licences has been streamlined to the extent that the licence can be made available within five hours of applying for one, there are several items that the government of India has put in a separate list.

Several agencies check the genuineness of the export before a licence for such goods is given.

"And especially after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in the US, the monitoring has become even more stringent," he said.

The DGFT said the intention behind this exercise is to ensure that "what we are exporting does not fall in the wrong hands" and thus the procedure of securing the permit is often very cumbersome.

"The application is sent to almost every government department, including the intelligence agencies and the police," Mansingh said.

He said an inter-ministerial group scrutinises such applications, even verifying the profile of the buyer company and checking whether that buyer company has any connections with "dubious" clients.