MEIS Claims for Wrongly Filled Shipping Bills for Exports between 1 April to 31 May 2015 Allowed

Customs EDI System from 1 June 2015 to Allow only Correctly Filled Shipping Bills for MEIS

[DGFT Public Notice No. 40 dated 9^th October 2015]

Effect of this Public Notice: Shipping bills, where declaration of intent ‘Y’ has not been marked and ‘N’ has been ticked inadvertently in the ‘reward item box’ while filing shipping bill in Customs for exports made between 1.4.2015 to 31.5.2015, shall be transmitted by CBEC to DGFT.

Subject: Declaration of intent under MEIS Scheme.

DGFT has received various representations from exporters and trade & Industry that many Custom House Agents of exporters have inadvertently ticked “N” in the reward item box while filing the shipping bills with Customs. Even though in many cases the item of export is eligible for MEIS, as “N” has been ticked, such shipping bills have not been transmitted to the DGFT system and exporters are therefore unable to obtain / find these shipping bills on the system for submitting claims under MEIS. It is also noted that the system of marking “Y” or “N” is not new and is in operation since 2012. Since para 3.01 (g) of Hand Book of Procedure to FTP (2015-20) does not allow manual feeding of EDI shipping bill details, filling of such claims is not possible manually.

2. As per para 3.14 of Hand Book of Procedure to FTP (2015-20), all exporters while filling export shipments under all categories of the shipping bills are required to declare the following intent to claim benefit under MEIS:

“We intend to claim rewards under Merchandise Exports from India Scheme (MEIS)”.

Declaration of intent is mandatory with effect from June 1, 2015. CBEC has also issued a circular no. 14/2015 dated April 20, 2015, which requires mandatory declaration of intent from 1.6.2015 onwards. In EDI generated shipping bills, exporters are required to tick mark “Y” in case they intend to claim benefits under MEIS and “N” in case they do not intend to claim benefit under MEIS.

3. In light of these circumstances and to address the matter, in exercise of powers conferred under paragraph 1.03 of the Foreign Trade Policy (2015-2020) read with reference to para 3.14 of Handbook of Procedures of FTP 2015-20, the Director General of Foreign Trade hereby allows the following procedure to be followed where exports have been made between 1.4.2015 to 31.5.2015, and where the exporter has inadvertently marked “N” in the “reward item box” and wishes to seek MEIS benefits:

Exporters shall submit physical copies of free shipping bills after electronic filing of application to RA at the time of submission of application for MEIS rewards in these cases. RA shall grant MEIS rewards after examination of such shipping bills in accordance with other provisions of FTP/HBP.

4. From 01.06.2015, only those shipping bills, which are transmitted by Custom Authorities to DGFT, shall be considered under MEIS.