Indian Westerlies

When it comes to international merchandise trade from India, documentary requirements come up as the biggest hurdle. In fact, documentary hassles contribute more than the inland transportation and handling costs, as can be seen from the plots below. (Source: Doing Business report 2013 by World Bank, data plotted in excel by your blogger) Documentation takes a time of 8 days out of 16 days required to export an average container out of the country.  In case of imports, it takes 8 days for documentary preparation out of a total of 20 days required to import a container into the country once it lands at the port. The last major revolution in decrease in transaction time/costs happened between 2007 and 2008 when Indian customs department introduced the EDI system ( ICEGATE ) for clearance of goods. The corresponding costs associated reflect the same trend. Documentation costs are very high when compared to best practices across the world. Howeve...

The supplement to FTP was a mixed bag. The highlights of the supplement to the FTP can be accessed here .  The blogger shall concentrate on few areas that appear novel. The usual 'percentage point increase in this incentive and widening of that scheme' will be left out, as any such review will just be a repeat of last year's post on annual supplement . Cutting the clutter out, the supplement has the following points: Some tweaking of land requirements and related criteria for SEZs Rationalization of Export Promotion Capital Goods Scheme Incentive scrips from exports can also be used to pay service tax on procurement of services Incentives for High tech products exports to be notified soon Incentives on incremental exports performance improvement Improvement in quality and timeliness in Foreign Trade Data Second task force on transaction cost in International Trade constituted EDI initiatives and procedural simplification efforts to continue The review: ...