Service sector exporters across travel, tourism, and hospitality segments, would be able to claim SEIS benefits for FY20 for which Rs 2,061 crore has been provisioned.

Trade, import, and export for MSMEs: The government on Thursday said it will release Rs 56,027 crore in the current financial year against pending export incentives due to over 45,000 exporters, around 98 per cent of which were small exporters in the MSME category. The incentives due to exporters belonged to different export promotion schemes such as MEIS, SEIS, RoSL, RoSCTL, other scrip-based schemes relating to earlier policies, and the remission support for RoDTEP and RoSCTL schemes for exports made in the 4th quarter of FY21.

Providing a breakup of the incentives due, the government said that Rs 56,027 crores of arrears is for different export promotion and remission schemes such as MEIS (Rs 33,010 crore), SEIS (Rs 10,002 crore), RoSCTL (Rs 5,286 crore), RoSL (Rs 330 crore), RoDTEP (Rs 2,568 crore), and other legacy schemes such as Target Plus (Rs 4,831 crore), etc. “This amount is over and above duty remission amount of Rs 12,454 crore for the RoDTEP scheme and Rs 6,946 crore for RoSCTL scheme already announced for exports made in this year, that is, FY22,” an official statement said.

India’s merchandise exports for April-August 2021 period stood at close to $164 billion, up 67 per cent over 2020-21 and 23 per cent over 2019-20 merchandise exports, the statement added. For merchandise exports, all sectors covered under MEIS including pharmaceuticals, iron and steel, engineering, chemicals, fisheries, agriculture and allied sectors, auto and auto components would be able to claim benefits for exports made in earlier years. The government also said that service sector exporters across travel, tourism, and hospitality segments, would be able to claim SEIS benefits for FY20 for which Rs 2,061 crore has been provisioned.

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According to a recent PayPal study, increased e-commerce adoption and digital payments due to the pandemic, which has also enabled seamless cross-border trade, represented a $526 billion export opportunity for small businesses. Of this, nearly 60 per cent of exported items were goods which represented a market worth $313 billion for India’s local artisans of tribal products, handicrafts, or small exporters of gems & jewelry. Some of the best performing sectors were gems & jewelry, ready-made garments, leather products, electronics, and handicrafts, clocking in $60 billion – close to 19 per cent of the total goods exports, according to PayPal’s Cross Border Trade Report 2021.