The Director General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) notified the Electronic filing and Issuance of Preferential Certificate of Origin (CoO) for India’s Exports under India-Mercosur PTA and India-Thailand EHSfrom 25th February 2021.
The DGFT informed that the electronic platform for Preferential CoO is being expanded further to add two more FTAs/PTAs to facilitate electronic application of Preferential Certificates of Origin under the given Trade Agreements.
The Preferential Certificate of Origin for exports to countries under the following trade agreements i.e. India-Mercosur Preferential Trade Agreement and India-Thailand Early Harvest Scheme shall also be applied and issued from the CoO e-platform with effect from 25th February 2021.
“No manual application for such a CoO should be submitted to an issuing agency from 25th February 2021. Any manual applications submitted prior to the given date may however be processed by the issuing agencies,” the DGFT in the circular said.
For these applications under the two Trade Agreements, the e-CoO system shall generate all the existing set of CoO copies besides 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 along with the stamp of the issuing office. The paper copies of the CoOs so issued may be collected by post or in person, for any submission to the Trade Agreement’s partner countries authorities.
It is noteworthy for the Indian Exporters to bear in mind the pointers with regard to the process.
Firstly, a Digital Signature Certificate (DSC) would be required for the purpose of electronic submission. 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 portal. 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.
Fourthly, 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.
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