Duty credits on restricted goods

EXIM MATTERS

ohibition on exports of many products have been lifted, but unless the exported products were freely exportable on the date of export, the benefits under the above schemes will not be available.  There may be situations when the DGFT might have permitted export of a restricted item or a licence (authorisation) to export a restricted item might have granted. Some of these exports of restricted items may have been permitted to enable fulfilment of export obligation. The grant of such permissions or licences or authorisations would not necessarily entitle the exporter for grant of duty credits under the above schemes.  The objective of the VKUG scheme is to promote exports of agricultural produce and their value-added-products, minor forest produce and their value-added-variants, gram udyog products and forest-based products.  The objective of the FMS scheme is to offset high freight cost and other externalities to select international markets with a view to enhance our export competitiveness in these countries.  The objective of the FPS is to incentivise export of such products, which have high employment intensity in rural and semi urban areas, so as to offset infrastructure in-efficiencies and other associated costs involved in marketing of these products.  The objective of HTP scheme is to incentivise export of high technology (Hi-Tech) products.  The logic behind the policy to deny duty credit benefits against export of restricted items is that the very idea of restriction on export of an item is to discourage its export. That restriction cannot co-exist with an incentive to export that item.  Some exporters are not convinced. The objective of FMS is to offset the high freight costs and other externalities to select international markets. These costs and other externalities exist even when restricted items are exported. The duty credits enable compensation and not incentive. Such compensation should not be denied even when restricted items are allowed to be exported for whatever reason, they feel.  In a separate clarification, the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) has reiterated that under the Target Plus Scheme (TPS), the holder of TPS certificate is permitted to import an item under the TPS and get the same processed into possible resultant products only if the same has a