The Centre declared tax refund rates under the Remission of Duties and Taxes on Exported Products (RoDTEP) scheme, covering 75 per cent of tariff lines. The rates will be in the range of 0.3 to 4.3 per cent of the freight-on-board value of the exported goods. While the programme will cover over a thousand Merchandise Exports from India Scheme (MEIS) that it has replaced, the allocation is less than half of the government’s annual outgo under the MEIS.

The RoDTEP scheme will decrease the benefit for most exporters as they would try to benefit from a recovery in global trade. The steel, pharma and chemical areas have been kept out of the RoDTEP scheme, Commerce Secretary BVR Subrahmanyam said. The government has now issued Rs 19,400 crore for both tax refund schemes Rebate of State, and Central Taxes & Levies (RoSCTL) for garment and made-up exporters and RoDTEP will cover debts from January 2021 to March 2022. For FY22, the issue can be about 17,000 crores, a source said.