DGFT 

or Directorate General of Foreign Trade is the agency of the

Ministry of Finance of the government organization in India responsible for the
formulation of Exim guidelines and principles for Indian importers and Indian
exporters of the country. Before 1991, DGFT was known as the Chief Controller
of Imports & Exports (CCI&E)

Functions of DGFT

Some of the major functions of DGFT and its regional offices through out

the country are as follows:

To implement the Exim Policy or Foreign Trade Policy of India by

introducing various schemes and guidelines through its network of dgft
regional offices thought-out the country. DGFT perform its functions in
coordination with state governments and all the other departments of
Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India.
 To Grant Exporter Importer Code Number to Indian Exporter and
Importers. IEC Number is a unique 10 digit code required by the traders or
manufacturers for the purpose of import and export in India. DGFT  IEC Codes
are mandatory for carrying out import export trade operations and
enable companies to acquire benefits on their imports/exports, indian
customs, export promotion councils  council etc in India.
 DGFT permits or regulate Transit of Goods from India or to countries
adjacent to India in accordance with the bilateral treaties between India and
other countries.
 To promote trade with neighbouring countries.
 To grant the permission of free export in Export Policy Schedule 2.
 DGFT also play an important role in controlling DEPB Rates.
 Setting standard input-output norms is also controlled by the DGFT.
 Any changes or formulation or addition of new codes in ITC-HS
Codes are also carried out by DGFT (Directorate General of Foreign Trade).
Apart from the above, DGFT also acts as a trade facilitator. It also deals with
the quality complaints of the foreign buyers. Officials DGFT works in close
coordination with other related economic offices like Customs
Commissionerates, Central Excise authorities, DRI authorities and Enforcement
Directorate.

DGFT Digital Signature

The Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), Ministry of Commerce

& Industry, has become India’s first digital signature enabled agency, marking a
big step forward in the promotion of paperless trading in the country’s foreign
trade sector. The DGFT, today signed an MOU (Memorandum of
Understanding) with M/s. SafeScrypt Limited, who will provide the DGFT with
necessary technical support and consultancy services in this regard.
Accordingly, the infrastructure available in DGFT for Electronic Data
Interchange (EDI) would now be PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) enabled and
there would be seamless transmission of authorised information.

From 1st December, 2002 the Office of DGFT at New Delhi has become
digital signature enabled. All the notifications issued by the DGFT are being
signed with encrypted digital signature. As a result, all Exim notifications,
public notices, and in course of time, licences issued by DGFT can be
electronically transmitted with digital signature, obviating the need of securing
an authenticated paper copy thereof. The exporting community who apply for
import/export licences, Importer Exporter Code (IEC) would now be able to
interact with DGFT on a secured electronic platform which will facilitate
paperless verification, processing and communication.

The office of DGFT is taking steps to enable Electronic Fund Transfer

(EFT) facility so that the exporters can transmit their applications along with
the application fee, as and where necessary without physically visiting either a
bank or the office of DGFT. Negotiations are underway with other public sector
banks like State Bank of India, Central Bank of India and other private sector
banks like ICICI and HDFC etc. in this regard. It is expected that shortly with the
EFT facility being made functional, the simultaneous activation of EFT and
digital signature would enable DGFT to take a gigantic leap in e-governance
initiative with complete paperless transaction.

At the moment DGFT is the first Government department to have

become digital signature enabled. The Controller of Certifying Authority (CCA)
has permitted SafeScrypt Limited, a 100% subsidiary of Satyam Infoway and an
affiliate of Verisign-USA, as the first licensed Certifying Authority (CA) under
the IT Act 2000. Subsequently, M/s. TCS Limited and Institute for Development
and Research in Banking Technology (IDRBT) Hyderabad have also become
Certifying Authorities (CAs). National Informatics System (NIC) and Central
Board of Excise & Customs (CBEC) are also in the process of obtaining licence
to become Certifying Authority (CA) to grant digital signature facility.

DGFT-Online objective

1. Enable users to be able to file license applications online

2. Enable software to handle different schemes like DEPB, EPCG, etc.

automatically

3. Approval of overall applications done online

4. Speedier processing of the licenses

5. Better MIS, audit trails and accountability

DGFT-Online application

1. User can login only using Digital Certificates which have IEC number

2. User creates document (typically *.doc word file ) and digitally signs it

3. A file is generated which is a digitally signed document and uploaded to

the DGFT server

4. Once the file reaches on server, it is again verified to make sure that no
data tampering has happened during transit. This provides for integrity
verification.

5. Whenever, the file has to be reviewed, it can be verified to make sure

that the file is not tampered with during static storage