Punjab exporters yet to get benefits of RoSCTL scheme

Seek PM’s intervention for early release of pending dues

Highlight: The RoSCTL rebate is paid to reimburse embedded taxes, including Central excise duty on fuel used in transportation, embedded CGST paid on inputs, purchases from unregistered dealers, inputs for transport sector and embedded CGST and compensation cess on coal used in the production of electricity.

Shivani Bhakoo

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, November 12

It’s been over eight months now when the Central government introduced Rebate of State and Central Taxes and Levies Scheme (RoSCTL) to refund all embedded State and Central Taxes meant for exports of made-up articles and garments, but eligible industrialists from Punjab are yet to get their pending dues.

There are around 900 exporters in Punjab which are affected by this delay. Though the scheme got notified on March 7, 2019, no exporter could get any benefit to date. As per the directions issued, the scheme was to remain in force up to March 31, 2020.

Talking to The Tribune, Narinder Chugh of Million Exporter Pvt Ltd said no exporter had received any reimbursement from the Ministry of Commerce to date under this scheme. “Several representations have been made to different departments by the Apparel Export Promotion Council but to no avail. If they were not in mood to provide relief to exporters, they should not have announced it,” he said.

Chugh said this scheme was likely to be extended to other products as well but it had failed to provide any relief to garment exporters whose huge amount of working capital was blocked due to taxes.

Meanwhile, the Home Textile Exporters' Welfare Association (HEWA) has sought Prime Minister Narendra Modi's intervention for release of pending dues under the RoSCTL.

The HEWA claims exporters are yet to receive the refunds from this scheme which are pending since last eight months.

According to HEWA Director Anant Srivastava, if the pending RoSCTL amount is released at the earliest it will be feasible for Indian exporters to ship their consignments on time.

According to Srivastava, a delegation from the HEWA met Union Textiles Minister Smriti Irani in September and had detailed discussion on pending RoSCTL dues.

Under the scheme, maximum rate of rebate for apparel is 6.05% while for made-ups, this goes up to 8.2%. The made-ups segment comprises home textiles products such as bed linen, pillows and carpets.

Another exporter Pawan Garg from Worldwide Textiles said exporters play on a margin of just 2-3% but 5-6% of embedded taxes get blocked when these are not reimbursed. He said in the wake of complaints filed by the USA against India to discontinue export incentive scheme (like MEIS), which was not in compliance with WTO guidelines, the Commerce Ministry had proposed the RoSCTL scheme.

The RoSCTL rebate is paid to reimburse embedded taxes, including Central excise duty on fuel used in transportation, embedded CGST paid on inputs, purchases from unregistered dealers, inputs for transport sector and embedded CGST and compensation cess on coal used in the production of electricity.