Rationalization of procedures in handling EODC requests under Advance/EPCG Authorizations - DGFT - Trade Notice No. 41/2018-19

F. No. 01/37/218/141/AM-19/EPCG-11 Government of India Ministry of Commerce and Industry Department of Commerce Directorate General of Foreign Trade Udyog Bhawan, New Delhi Trade Notice No. 41/2018-19 Dated the 4th January, 2019 To, 1. All Regional Authorities of DGFT 2. All Commissioners of Customs 3. All members of trade and industry Subject: Rationalization of procedures in handling EODC requests under Advance/EPCG Authorizations. The Central Board of Indirect Taxes d Customs (CBIC) has intimated this Directorate that as part of the rationalization of the procedures and for avoiding duplication of the work, the CBIC has vide various circulars/instructions provided that the EODCs received from the RAs of DGFT under Advance Authorization/EPCG Schemes should normally be accepted without further verification, except in 5% cases where they should be verified in detail before acceptance. However, in terms of the CBIC's Circular dated 20.04.2015 and the instruction dated 14.10.2016 , it is mandatory to verify genuineness of all non-EDI Shipping Bills/Bills of Export on which an EODC is issued by the RAs as there have been instances of fabricated export documents (purported to be of Customs non-EDI ports). 2. The CBIC has further intimated that in order to ascertain as to whether there is any non-EDI Shipping bill taken into account for the purpose of EODC, their field formations have reported that they are calling for ANF 5B from all the exporters and based on the same only, it can be ascertained as to whether any non-EDI Shipping bill is involved there or not. This exercise in all cases of redemption of authorizations defeats the purpose of simplification of procedure which aims to reduce verification of EODC to not more than 5% of cases. 3. Therefore, in order to eliminate dual checking of each and every case, this Directorate has issued a Public Notice No. 66/2015-20 dated 3rd January, 2019 amending ANF-4F and ANF-5B by adding Sr. No. 11. under the Declaration/Undertaking in ANF-4F and Sr. No. 9. under the Declaration/Undertaking in ANF-5B to get the number of EDI/non-EDI Shipping Bills used by the applicant for redemption/EODC. 4. In this regard, it has been decided that in the Redemption/EODC requests, wherever non-EDI Shipping Bills have been declared to be used by the applicant, all RAs while issuing the Redemption Letter/EODC shall make the following remark in the covering letter/certificate itself: This Redemption involves non-EDI Shipping Bills. (Rajbir Sharma) Joint Director General of Foreign Trade Room No. 103, Phone No. 23061056 Email: [email protected]