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The Directorate General of Foreign Trade has removed the requirement of submitting physical duty payment challans with applications for Export Obligation Discharge Certificates under the Advance Authorisation and Export Promotion Capital Goods Schemes.
The change applies to voluntary duty payments made on or after 1 August 2026; Trade Notice No. 15/2026-27 dated 5 August 2026 has been issued to exporters and stakeholders.
Licence-wise voluntary duty payment data from Customs/ICEGATE has been integrated with DGFT's online systems through API-based data exchange, allowing authenticated verification directly against the concerned authorisation.
Exporters can verify on the DGFT Customer Portal that a payment has been correctly mapped to their authorisation before filing, while Regional Authorities see the same authenticated record on the DGFT Back Office, removing manual verification.
The Ministry expects shorter processing timelines, better data accuracy and lower compliance costs, particularly for MSME exporters handling closure formalities in-house.
Both schemes work on the same bargain: the exporter gets a duty concession up front and undertakes to export in return. Under the Advance Authorisation Scheme, inputs that are physically incorporated into an export product may be imported duty-free. Under the Export Promotion Capital Goods Scheme, capital goods — machinery used to produce export goods — may be imported at concessional or zero customs duty. In both cases the authorisation carries an export obligation, and the authorisation stays open on the books until that obligation is discharged. The Export Obligation Discharge Certificate is the document by which the Regional Authority of DGFT certifies that the obligation has been met and closes the authorisation. Where the obligation is not fulfilled in full, the holder regularises the case by voluntarily paying the proportionate customs duty saved, plus applicable interest, and only then applies for the EODC. Until now the proof of that payment travelled as a paper challan that a Regional Authority verified by hand. The reform replaces that document with an authenticated electronic record pulled from Customs — the same fact, but now sourced from the system that generated it rather than from the applicant.
Simple Analogy: It is the difference between bringing a printed bank receipt to a counter and the counter simply looking up the payment in the bank's own system.
Formulates and implements India's foreign trade policy, issues the Importer-Exporter Code, grants Advance Authorisations and EPCG authorisations and issues Export Obligation Discharge Certificates through its Regional Authorities
The field offices that grant authorisations, verify export obligation fulfilment and issue EODCs — the officials for whom manual verification of challans has now been eliminated
The Indian Customs Electronic Gateway — the national portal for electronic filing of bills of entry and shipping bills and for customs duty payment; the source of the authenticated duty payment records now shared with DGFT
Administers customs, GST and central excise; ICEGATE is its portal and the counterparty in the API integration with DGFT
Allow duty-free import of inputs physically incorporated in an export product
Key: Administered by DGFT under the Foreign Trade Policy; issued against an export obligation, and where the obligation is not fully met the holder pays the proportionate customs duty saved with interest before seeking closure
Allow import of capital goods for pre-production, production and post-production at concessional or zero customs duty
Key: Also administered by DGFT against an export obligation; the machinery imported must be used to produce goods that are then exported to the specified extent
Certify that an authorisation holder has discharged the export obligation, allowing the authorisation to be closed
Key: Issued by DGFT Regional Authorities; from 1 August 2026 the supporting duty payment proof flows electronically from ICEGATE rather than as a physical challan
The current framework governing India's exports and imports, replacing the earlier Foreign Trade Policy 2015-20
Key: Built around four pillars — incentive to remission, export promotion through collaboration, ease of doing business and technology-enabled facilitation, and emerging areas — with a dynamic, open-ended design rather than a fixed sunset date; the Advance Authorisation and EPCG chapters sit within it
The statute under which the Central Government frames the Foreign Trade Policy, appoints the Director General of Foreign Trade and requires an Importer-Exporter Code for any person importing or exporting
The statute under which duty exemptions for Advance Authorisation and EPCG imports are notified, and under which the proportionate duty and interest are recovered when an export obligation is not met
The DGFT instrument communicating this procedural change to exporters and stakeholders
The policy and its procedural handbook set out the terms of Advance Authorisation and EPCG authorisations and the EODC closure process that this notice simplifies
API integration between two government systems that already hold the same fact is the standard pattern of Indian trade facilitation reform — the same logic as the single window and faceless assessment in Customs
Reducing documentation and physical interface at the border and in post-clearance formalities is precisely what the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement obliges members to pursue
The release singles out MSME exporters who handle closure formalities in-house, without customs brokers — the segment for whom every paper document is a disproportionate cost
Advance Authorisation and EPCG are duty exemption schemes, granting relief up front; RoDTEP and Duty Drawback are remission schemes, refunding embedded taxes after export — a distinction UPSC has tested directly
GS Paper 3 > Indian Economy > External Sector, Trade Policy and Government Interventions
General Awareness > Foreign Trade and Export Finance
General Awareness > Economy and Government Bodies
Export promotion schemes and trade facilitation measures recur in Prelims economy and in banking general awareness
An authorisation permitting duty-free import of inputs that are physically incorporated in an export product, against an export obligation
Export Promotion Capital Goods Scheme — permits import of capital goods at concessional or zero customs duty against an export obligation
Export Obligation Discharge Certificate — the certificate issued by a DGFT Regional Authority confirming that an authorisation's export obligation has been discharged, allowing closure
Indian Customs Electronic Gateway — the CBIC portal for electronic filing of bills of entry and shipping bills and for customs duty payment
The process by which an authorisation holder who has not met the export obligation in full pays the proportionate customs duty saved with interest, and then applies for the EODC