Various representations have been received in the Board wherein micro, small and medium enterprise exporters have informed that their IGST refunds are held up and that they are unable to approach Customs port of exports due to factors like distance, lack of information/knowledge etc. As part of the ongoing Refund Fortnight, it has been decided to set up Help Desks at the offices of FIEO and AEPC for expeditious resolution of IGST refund related issues.

2. The Help Desks would be located at the locations mentioned in Annexure A, and would function for a period of 2 weeks till 1st August, 2018. They will be manned by officers of Customs, who shall be nominated by the jurisdictional Customs zone. The necessary infrastructure like Computer, Scanner/Printer, Internet, Cabin Space etc. would be made available to the officers by FIEO/AEPC.

3. The Directorate of Systems shall provide the status of each pending IGST refund claim with specific error due to which it is being held up, on Antarang. The icegate email ID of the officer(s) deputed at the Help Desk may immediately be informed to Team.ICES@icegate.gov.in to enable access to the data. The officers deputed at Help Desks would use this data to inform the exporters about the documents required, if any, and guide them to resolve the errors. The exporters can provide details related to any port of export at the Help Desk near their location. The Help Desk shall act as an extended office of the Port of export and collect documents/ information on behalf of the port of export. The details provided by the exporters to the Help Desk shall be transmitted by ICEGATE e-mail to the nodal officers at the port of export. The ICEGATE e-mail ID of the nodal officer of each port of export shall immediately be informed to Team.ICES@icegate.gov.in. The Customs officers at the port of export shall process the refund claim after all the necessary details/documents submitted at the Help Desks have been forwarded to the nodal officer at the port of export. There shall be no need for the exporters to visit any port of export once all the requisite documents/information have been submitted at the Help Desks.

4. Field formations may, therefore, take necessary steps to bring these changes to the knowledge of exporters.

5. Difficulties, if any, may be brought to the notice of the Board.

6. Hindi version follows.

F. No: 450/119/2017-CusIV

Yours faithfully

(Zubair Riaz)
Director(Customs)

Annexure A

1. FIEO offices in the following locations

(i) Ahmedabad
(ii) Bangalore
(iii) Chennai
(iv) Cochin
(v) Coimbatore
(vi) Delhi
(vii) Hyderabad
(viii) Kolkata
(ix) Ludhiana
(x) Mumbai

2. AEPC office, Tirupur.