The Director General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) issued Trade Notice for Electronic filing and Issuance of Preferential Certificate of Origin (CoO) for India’s Exports under GSP, GSTP, India-Malaysia CECA, India-Singapore CECA with effect from 15th October 2020. 

The trade notice issued by DGFT informed that the electronic platform for Preferential CoO is being expanded to add four more FTAs/PTAs to facilitate electronic application of CoOs. 

The e-platform has been designed as a single-point access for all FTAs/PTAs, all designated CoO issuing agencies and for all export products, and is accessible at the URL, https://coo.dgft.gov.in. 

It may be noted that the CoO for exports from India under following FTAs/PTAs are already being applied and issued through the e-platform. 

To further this trade facilitation initiative, the Preferential Certificate of Origin for exports to various other countries under the four trade agreements namely, Generalized System of Preferences (GSP); Global System of Trade Preferences (GSTP); India Malaysia Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (IMCECA); and India Singapore Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (ISCECA) shall also be applied and issued from the CoO e-platform with effect from 15th October 2020. 

The trade notice further clarified that CoO applications for exports under GSP may also be submitted through e-CoO platform with effect from 15th October 2020.

However, the earlier procedure of submitting the manual CoO applications (under GSP) physically to the designated issuing agency shall also be in operation. There shall be a transition period of 3 months when both the online and the physical process shall be operated.

“Manual submission of GSP CoO applications is accordingly allowed to continue up to January 14, 2021 or until further orders,” DGFT notified. The notice informed that for the applications under the FTAs/PTAs, the e- CoO system shall generate all the existing set of CoO copies along with an additional copy i.e. electronic copy. 

The electronic copy shall bear the image signature of the officer and stamp of the issuing agency.

“The exporter may however get the remaining copies duly ink-signed by the issuing officer with the stamp from the designated issuing office. 

The copies of the CoOs issued may be collected by post or in person, for any submission to the FTAs/PTAs partner countries authorities,” the notice said. 

The notice directed the Exporters to take note of the additional points with regard to the process being notified. Firstly, digital Signature Certificate (DSC) would be required for the purpose of electronic verification. 

The digital signature would be the same as used in other DGFT applications. Secondly, the digital signature may be Class II or Class III and should have the IEC of the firm embedded in the DSC. 

Thirdly, any new applicant exporter would be required to initially register at the e-platform. 

The password would be sent on the email and mobile number of the IEC holder.

In case the IEC holder desires to update their email on which communication is to be sent, the same may be done by using the ‘IEC profile Management’ service on the DGFT website https://dgft.gov.in. Lastly, once registration is completed, the IEC branch details would be auto-populated as per the DGFT-IEC database. 

Applicants are required to ensure that updated IEC details are available in the DGFT system. Necessary steps may be taken to modify the IEC details online, whenever required.

Published On : 14-10-2020

Source : Tax Scan