The Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) has rolled out automated issuance of Free Sale and Commerce Certificates (FSC) on its portal, removing mandatory manual scrutiny for eligible exporters and cutting a step that has long added delay to export documentation.
What are Free Sale and Commerce Certificates, and why do they matter?
FSCs are issued to exporters under India’s Foreign Trade Policy for products that fall outside the scope of the Drugs & Cosmetics Act, 1940. Until now, every application, however routine, was routed to the concerned DGFT Regional Authority for manual analysis, verification, and approval before a certificate was issued, a process the Ministry of Commerce and Industry acknowledged involved substantial processing time.
How does the new automated system work?
Under DGFT’s Trade Notice No. 24/2026-2027, dated August 31, eligible applications will now be considered for automatic issuance in line with the prevailing regulatory framework, bypassing manual scrutiny entirely. This is not a blanket exemption, however. Applications that require verification, or that fall outside the parameters set for automated processing, will continue to be referred to the relevant Regional Authority for manual review as before.
Does automation mean less oversight?
Not entirely. DGFT has built risk-based checks into the new system, meaning certain applications that are approved automatically can still be flagged after the fact for review by the concerned Regional Authority based on the system’s risk management parameters. The intent is to strip out avoidable manual intervention for low-risk, routine cases while preserving oversight capacity for applications that warrant closer scrutiny.
What does this mean for exporters?
The Ministry expects the automated mechanism to significantly reduce processing time for a substantial category of FSC applications and lower the overall compliance burden tied to the earlier manual workflow. For exporters, particularly those dealing in high volumes of routine, low-risk shipments, this translates into faster certificate turnaround and fewer administrative delays at a stage of the export process that has traditionally been a bottleneck.
Where does this fit in India’s ease-of-doing-business push?
The move adds to a broader pattern of DGFT digitising trade documentation workflows, following a similar rationale seen across other recent trade facilitation measures: shifting from manual, discretion-heavy verification toward system-driven, rule-based processing with targeted risk review. For India’s exporters navigating an already complex regulatory and logistics environment, faster certificate issuance removes one more friction point in getting goods to port and onward to international markets.
