Bengaluru Addnl DGFT office is now exporter friendly

MANGALURU: Office of additional director-general of foreign trade in Bengaluru has taken a slew of steps to make it exporter community friendly in more ways than one. Daily meetings with traders in the afternoon on every working day, open house every Wednesday, setting up of grievances redressal committee, an in-house developed website and short videos initiating the uninitiated into the world of exports are some of these proactive steps that the office has taken.
Explaining these steps to local cashew and marine exporters at a meeting organized by the office in association with Kanara Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) on Monday, Vijay Kumar, additional DGFT, said the whole idea is to make the office a one-stop solution for the myriad needs of the exporter community.The exporter community had reservations about the office and these initiatives were taken at the local level to address the issues, Vijay Kumar explained.
“We will give resolvable commitment to exporters who turn up with their grievances at the open house,” he said, adding one of the major issues that exporters flagged at this fora was delays in issuing export obligation discharge certificate (EODC), which in some cases was delayed up to a year. “We have now started pre-scrutiny of EODC and if the documents are in order, issue the same within 10-days, which was not heard of in the recent past,” he added.
Referring to the other initiative, Vijay said the trade satisfaction survey carried out by his office randomly with exporters walking in has shown positive results. “While 98% have expressed their satisfaction with our work, we are focusing on the 2% who have their reservations,” he said. In addition, the exporters may reach him directly on the office’s twitter handle @dgftbangalore, he said adding they could also do so by logging on to www.jdgft-bangalore.kar.nic.in.
The videos tutoring upcoming exporters and available on ministry of commerce website too were developed in-house at Bengaluru, he said. Exporters should also make use of the dashboard on the ministry’s website, an analytical tool that gives them an insight in to export trends and markets available for them. The ministry has also taken up the midterm review of foreign trade policy 2015-20 and exporters may share their areas of concerns, suggestions, he added.