In continuation with the initiatives taken by the Government from time to time to promote Ease of Doing Business for the exporting community, the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) has enabled automated issuance of Free Sale and Commerce Certificates (FSC) on the DGFT portal. These Certificates are issued to exporters, under Foreign Trade Policy, for items which are not covered under the Drugs & Cosmetics Act, 1940. At present, such certificates are issued by Regional Authorities (RAs) of DGFT after scrutiny and verification.

Eligible applications will now be considered for automatic issuance in accordance with the prevailing framework, without being routed for manual scrutiny. The automated mechanism is expected to reduce processing time for a significant category of FSC applications and lower the compliance burden associated with the earlier manual process.

Applications requiring verification, or those not meeting the automated processing parameters, may continue to be routed to the concerned RA for manual processing.

Certain auto-approved applications may also be subsequently flagged to the concerned RA for review under the system's risk management parameters.

The measure is expected to reduce avoidable manual intervention, improve the predictability of processing and facilitate faster issuance of FSCs for eligible exporters, while retaining appropriate verification and oversight for applications requiring scrutiny. By strengthening automated, rule-based processing and applying risk-based review, the initiative is expected to make the issuance of Free Sale and Commerce Certificates more efficient, transparent and predictable for exporters and administering authorities.

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