The Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), the nodal agency under the ministry of commerce and industry facilitating export and import, is gradually expanding its online presence across India, replacing physical offices with virtual ones to promote automated paperless processes.
“DGFT will be transformed further into more trade promotion roles so that it acts as a single-window for trade promotion activities. With all processes online, DGFT would move more and more in the direction of data-driven and empirical policy formulations. This would provide for agile trade policy formulations, which are more responsive to changing scenarios of international trade,” the commerce ministry said in a booklet on Electronic Governance and Trade Facilitation Reforms.
“Within a very short time frame, the entire gamut of our approval process will become paperless and go online,” commerce secretary Anup Wadhawan said at an event to release the booklet.
DGFT has been exchanging online data with departments and agencies, such as income tax, customs, ministry of corporate affairs, banks, and the Unique Identification Authority of India, besides special economic zones, to facilitate e-verification. The move provides confidence in the online system and will ensure that the same data will not have to be submitted at multiple places.
DGFT also plans to remove the existing process of queuing up for benefits and approvals wherever possible. “The exporter or importer will not have to wait on DGFT for any business approval. DGFT would be implementing post-issuance audit systems for managing any risks for such a business-friendly, flexible system,” according to the booklet.
As part of its National Trade Facilitation Plan 2020-23, DGFT plans to transform the cross-border trade ecosystem via transparent, risk-based and technology-driven procedures which is supported by state-of-the-art IT infrastructure and data integration. It also aims to bring down the issuance and approval time for export benefit, export promotion schemes, for import and export licences for restricted items.
Source from: https://www.livemint.com/news/india/dgft-planning-to-replace-physical-offices-by-virtual-ones-11616418747586.html