New Delhi, Nov 11 (Agency) Amid reports that many industry chambers continue to issue non-preferential certificate of origin (CoO) in physical mode, Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) has said that such offline certificates would not be valid. “On the request of industry associations and chambers we had extended the deadline (for moving to the online issuance of CoO) thrice. There can’t be unlimited extensions,” DGFT director general Amit Yadav told UNI. They (manually-issued CoO) won’t be valid,” he added. A CoO is a trade document issued by authorized agencies to certify that goods in an export shipment are wholly obtained, produced, manufactured or processed in a particular country. The document actually declares ‘nationality’ of a product and is produced to satisfy customs and other procedural requirements. In a notice to exporters and members of the trade last month, the DGFT had extended the deadline to shift from the system of manual/paper-based submission and processing of non-preferential CoO applications to October 31, 2021.
This was third extension of the deadline for moving to online based process for issuing CoO. With effect from November 1, electronic filing of non-preferential CoO through the Common Digital Platform has been made mandatory. DGFT Yadav said that 85 agencies are already on-boarded and as many as 12,712 CoOs were issued on November 10. Industry sources said that one of the leading industry bodies earlier this month wrote to DGFT highlighting that many chambers continued to issue CoO non-preferential in physical mode defying its order. While seeking clarity as to whether both offline and online mode would be used to process CoO applications, the industry association wanted a circular to be issued on the matter.