Automatic and hybrid generation of status holder certificate by DGFT

[Vivek Jalan]

Status Holder Certificates issued under FTP 2015-20 will remain valid till 30th September 2023 only and any IEC holder willing to avail the Status Holder Certificate under the FTP 2023. It has been provided by Public Notice No: 32/2023 & Trade Notice No. 28/2023-24 issued by the DGFT that The Status Holder Certificate (SHC) shall now be electronically generated based on export data available in DGCI&S database with no requirement by the exporter to file any kind of application in most cases. However, in certain cased an application may still be required to be filed online.

In the interest of trade facilitation, the endeavour has been to recognize and grant system-generated electronic Status Holder Certification, based on merchandise export data available with DGCI&S without the need for filing any application by the exporter.

Wherever required, exporters may also file an application online for recognition as well as for up-gradation of Status under the Policy in ANF 1B along with CA Certificate. Online Application for Status certificate shall be filed with regional jurisdictional offices (RA) of DGFT as determined by the location of Registered Office in the case of Company and of Head Office in the case of others as per Appendix 1A.

The process will be as follows –

A. The individual exporters will be divided into the five Status categories based on available merchandise export figures from EDI, non-EDI Ports and SEZ ports as per the eligibility criterion in Foreign Trade Policy 2023.

B. The e-SHC will be made available to the exporting entity in their registered email and the customer dashboard @ DGFT portal (https://www.dgft.gov.in/CP/) by 15th of August each year.

C. The data set used for the Status categorization will be the merchandise export performance of the preceding 3 FYs or the preceding 2 FYs (in case of gems and jewellery sector) plus the 3-month export data from April to June of the current FY.

D. Services exporters, deemed exporters and exporters with Double weightage (as admissible under para 1.27 of FTP 2023) and other exporters who do not receive their e-SHCs within 48 hours of issue of this Trade Notice will need to make an application, if not already made, for grant of Status Certificate as per the FTP 2023 provisions in the existing IT module along with supporting CA certificate. This facility of automatic e-SHC cannot be extended to these cases.

E. All already filed pending/in-process Status applications under FTP 2023 will be scrutinized by the IT system for auto-issuance of Status Holder Certificate where the applied Status category is the same as identified by the system. Such Files will be shown as ‘closed’ after auto-issue.

F. In case e-SHC is not upgraded, the IEC holder will need to move an amendment application at the DGFT portal as per para 1.08 of HBP 2023.