Export Sops for Telecom, IT Scrapped.

NEW DELHI: The Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) has withdrawn benefits available to exporters of information technology (IT), IT-enabled services, telecommunication and airlines services under the Served from India scheme.  

Sectors such as computer consultancy services, software implementation, data processing and database services are also now outside the ambit of the scheme that was introduced with much fanfare a few years ago. The other sectors affected include real estate, financial services and fuel transport by pipelines.  

Under the scheme, service exporters were given duty credit equivalent to 10% of foreign exchange earned during the current financial year. Though exporters lobby Fieo described it as a "big setback" at a time when they were "grappling with fragile global recovery", government officials said that sectors that had been excluded from the ambit of the scheme were not facing any difficulties and were not significant users of the scheme.

The changes have been notified by DGFT, which has come out with a new list of services eligible for the Served from India scheme. Further, the eligibility criteria has been tightened.

Source : timesofindia.indiatimes.com