Press Information Bureau

Government of India

Ministry of Commerce & Industry

01-February-2013 15:25 IST

Shri S R Rao, Secretary, Department of Commerce today inaugurated the India's Trade Portal here. 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/.

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DS/RK

Trade Portal provides tariff, rules of origin and standards data to support exporters' compliance and international transactions. A centralized Trade Portal provides Indian exporters and importers with a digital database of current MFN and preferential tariffs, Rules of Origin, Sanitary and Phytosanitary measures and Technical Barriers to Trade requirements, searchable by HS code or product name, to assist compliance and successful international transactions; maintenance is to be carried out by IIFT under the Department of Commerce's guidance and the Portal will be expanded based on stakeholder feedback.