Eastern Mirror Desk
Dimapur, Sep. 14: The Union Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs, Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday announced the Centre’s measures to boost the export and housing sector.
According to PIB, the Centre has decided to extend the scheme of reimbursement of taxes and duties for export promotion. Remission of Duties or Taxes on Export Product (RoDTEP) will replace the existing Merchandise Exports from India Scheme (MEIS).
RoDTEP will incentivise exporters more adequately than the existing schemes put together, it stated.
The estimated revenue to be forgone on this scheme is projected at INR 50,000 crore.
A fully automated electronic route for Input Tax Credits (ITC) in GST will also be implemented by the end of September 2019, and is expected to “monitor and speed up ITC refunds”.
Export Credit Guarantee Corporation (ECGC) has been initiated, with an expected cost of INR 1700 crore per annum, to offer higher insurance cover to banks lending working capital for exports.
The Priority Sector Lending (PSL) norms for export credit have been revised and an additional INR 36,000 crore to INR 68,000 crore will be released under this sector, it informed.
In order to reduce the “time to export or turn-around time”, technology will be leveraged through “seamless process digitisation of all export clearances (port/airport/customs etc.) and elimination of offline/manual services”, it stated.
A special ‘Free trade Agreement (FTA) Utilisation Mission’ will also be set up to work exclusively with the Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO), the apex trade promotion organisation in India, and other export houses ‘to utilise concessional tariffs in each FTA’, the report said.
For the housing sector, the External Commercial Borrowings (ECB) guidelines will be relaxed to facilitate financing of homebuyers who are eligible under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) scheme.
The interest rate will be lowered on Housing Building Advance, in order to encourage government servants to buy new houses, it stated.
Moreover, last mile funding worth INR 10 crore by the government of India and roughly the same amount by outside investors will be invested on affordable and middle-income housing projects.
“The objective is to focus on construction of unfinished units”, it added.
