The Center has suspended the mandatory obligation on exporters to obtain a Certificate of Origin (COO) online for each outbound consignment from November 1 till January 31. Hindu informed of Businesses were facing serious operational challenges Trying to obey orders.
The online COO system for exports to countries with which India had a preferential trade agreement was expanded in late 2019 to cover all merchandise exports from November through a trade notice issued on October 18 Was.
In a fresh notice last Monday, the Commerce Department said that ‘the transition period for mandatory filing of applications for non-preferential certificate of origin through the e-COO platform was extended till January 31’.
“The existing system for submission and processing of non-preferential COO applications in manual/paper mode is being permitted for the specified time period and online system is not being made mandatory,” it clarified.
Several exporters from states had reported difficulties in registering on the e-COO platform on the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) portal with prescribed high quality digital signature certificates and obtaining certificates for their shipments. The department that oversees the DGFT has now requested the exporters to register on the platform at the earliest.
In the first half of this month, when online certificates were mandatory, the department had eased exporters’ concerns and said the move was aimed at improving ease of doing business in line with the government’s ‘Digital India’ focus.
Industry bodies had pointed out that existing export facilitation intermediaries such as customs house agents, who handle most of the export paperwork, were not able to share the data on behalf of the exporters, as DGFT did not share the API (Application Programming Interface). did. new stage.
On November 10, in response to questions from Hindu, The department had said that the e-COO platform had a simple registration process and its design allowed the lead user or exporter to grant access rights to other secondary users such as custom house agents. While it did not respond to a question on whether API-sharing is being considered, it did say that 85 agencies have already been ‘enabled on the portal’.
The Federation of Indian Exporters Organization had urged the government to address the initial challenges and allow API-sharing to help the exporting community more quickly introduce the new system of digital authentication, while noting that e-COO Will address many. It is a matter of concern for the exporters and importing countries.
“This online facility provides ‘ease of doing business’ to the exporting community and provides a verifiable authentication mechanism to the participating countries to verify the genuineness of the COO issued through a QR code which is the same as the issued E. -Adds credibility to the COO,” the department had said.
India’s monthly merchandise exports have crossed $30 billion in seven consecutive months and are largely on course to reach the government’s record target of $400 billion in 2021-22.
Maharashtra Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture President Santosh Mandlecha said, “We appreciate the positive response of the government to our request for immediate intervention.” The industry body had indicated that even consignments of perishable agricultural produce from November 1 were facing challenges due to difficulties in registering digital signature on the DGFT portal.
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