MANU/DGFT/0052/2017

Ministry : Ministry of Commerce and Industry

Department/Board : DGFT

Trade Notice No. : 09/2018

Date : 12.06.2017

To

1. All IEC holders/applicants
2. All EPCs / All Chambers of Trade and Industries
3. FIEO/ASSOCHAM/CII
4. All RA's of DGFT
5. All field formations of Customs

Changes in IEC with the introduction of GST-regd

The Foreign Trade (Development &Regulation) Act, 1992 provides that no person shall make any import or export except under an Importer Exporter Code (IEC) number, granted by the Director General of Foreign Trade or the officer authorized by the Director General in this behalf. Further, Para 2.05 of the FTP, 2015-20 lays down that IEC, a 10 digit number, is mandatory for undertaking any import export activities, while Para 2.08 of the HBP (2015-20) lays down the procedure to be followed for obtaining an IEC, which is PAN based. As on date PAN has one to one correlation with IEC.

2. With the implementation of the GST w.e.f. (the notified date), GSTIN would be used for purposes of (i) credit flow of IGST on import of goods, and (ii) refund or rebate of IGST related to export of goods. Registration No. under GST, called GSTIN, is a 15-digit alpha numeric code with PAN prefixed by State Code and suffixed by 3 digit details of business verticals of the PAN holder. As GSTIN will be used for the purposes mentioned above, it thereby assumes importance as identifier at the transaction level. In view of this, it has been decided that importer/exporter would need to declare only GSTIN (wherever registered with GSTN) at the time of import and export of goods. The PAN level aggregation of data would automatically happen in the system.

3. Since obtaining GSTIN is not compulsory for all importers / exporters below a threshold limit of turnover, all exporters / importers may not register with GSTIN [barring compulsory registration in certain cases as provided in section 24 of the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017 (12 of 2017) or in cases where either credit is claimed of IGST], therefore, GSTIN cannot become universal, as IEC is for import/export business. Further, DGFT recognizes only the corporate entity (single identity) and not individual transactions.

4. As a measure of ease of doing business, it has been decided to keep the identity of an entity uniform across the Ministries/Departments. Henceforth (with the implementation of GST), PAN of an entity will be used for the purpose of IEC, i.e., IEC will be issued by DGFT with the diff........