New Delhi: The Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) has taken a significant step towards promoting ease of doing business for exporters by automating the issuance of Free Sale & Commerce Certificates (FSC) through its portal. The initiative aims to reduce the time required to issue certificates and lower the compliance burden on exporters.
Under the Foreign Trade Policy, FSCs are issued to exporters of goods that do not fall under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940. Until now, these certificates were issued by DGFT’s Regional Authorities after examination and verification of applications.
Under the new system, eligible applications will be considered for automatic issuance as per the existing framework. Such applications will not be routinely sent to officials for detailed manual scrutiny. The automated process is expected to reduce the processing time for a significant category of FSC applications.
However, applications requiring verification or those that do not meet the criteria for automatic processing may be referred to the concerned Regional Authority officials for examination. Some automatically approved applications may also be selected for review under the system’s risk management parameters.
The initiative is expected to reduce unnecessary human intervention, improve predictability and enable eligible exporters to obtain FSCs more quickly.
At the same time, appropriate verification and monitoring will continue for applications requiring additional scrutiny. The new system is expected to make the issuance of Free Sale & Commerce Certificates more efficient, transparent and predictable by strengthening automated, rule-based processing and introducing risk-based review.
The move marks another step towards simplifying and digitising export procedures and is expected to provide greater convenience to exporters while maintaining necessary regulatory oversight.
