16.3

Licence to status holders and green card holders shall be issued within 24 hours. Provision of paragraph 7.3 of the Handbook (Vol.1) shall not be applicable to such exporters.

In case of exporters (other than status holders and green card holders), the licences shall be issued within 3 working days reckoned from the day of presentation of relevant hard copies of application with prescribed documents after following the prescribed procedure.

Under this scheme, an exporter would be able to file his application on the DGFT website at http://www.nic.in/eximpol. The application will then be downloaded by the concerned licensing authority and processed in accordance with the prevalent rules and regulations. Deficiency, if any, shall be communicated online to the applicant. The applicant will have to visit the concerned office to handover the hard copy of the application alongwith the requisite documents including the application fee. The licence shall be issued in the time frame as mentioned above on receipt of the hard copies of the documents as mentioned above after due scrutiny as prescribed in the Handbook (Vol.1).

The facility will reduce unnecessary physical interface with DGFT. It will be also enable faster processing, speedier communication of deficiencies, if any, and on-line availability of application processing status.

Licence issued electronically shall be transmitted to the Customs through EDI Mode. This will enable simultaneous logging of DEEC under Advance Licencing scheme. This shall also obviate the need for physical verification of DEPB before allowing clearance as the verification will be done electronically by the Customs.