India's Trade Portal

S R Rao, Secretary, Department of Commerce inaugurated the India's Trade Portal on 1 February. The Trade Portal has been developed to facilitate India's exporters in trading which may result in the expansion of trade. The Portal offers Indian exporters and importers respectively a comprehensive guidance for concluding international trade transactions successfully with a specific focus on Indian traders trading with SAARC, ASEAN and top 25 export/import destinations (as per value terms). The portal provides user-friendly access to relevant information for import and export of different products in digital form.

It provides an access to an online database of current MFN Tariff, Preferential Tariff of top 25 destinations with which India has entered into regional or bilateral agreements or variants of them, Rules of Origin ("Ro0"), Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures ("SPS") and Technical Barriers to Trade ("TBT") requirements of various products that an Indian trader requires for ensuring successful trade transactions. The Portal provides a search criteria based on HS Code and/or product names.

The Secretary expressed that Trade Portal is a dynamic concept and invited feedbacks from the stakeholders for further development of the portal. He stated that an endeavour shall be made to expand it to other trading partners and the task of maintenance of Trade Portal will be carried out by IIFT under the overall guidance of the Department of Commerce.

The link to the Trade Portal has been provided through Department of Commerce website under 'What's New' and Useful Links'. The direct link to the website is http://trade.iift.ac.in/.