Indian reforms strengthen DGFT norms committees’ functioning: Ministry

The measures aimed at improving turnaround time, enabling early approvals and enhancing transparency and predictability under the Advance Authorisation (AA) scheme.

The Indian Ministry of Commerce & Industry has undertaken a series of targeted reforms to strengthen the functioning of norms committees under the Directorate General of Foreign Trade, it recently said.
The measures—aimed at improving turnaround time, enabling early approvals and enhancing transparency and predictability under the Advance Authorisation scheme—have resulted in improved outcomes.

DGFT administers the AA scheme and the Duty-Free Import Authorisation (DFIA) scheme under the Foreign Trade Policy. These schemes allow duty-free import of inputs that are physically incorporated in export products.

Authorisations are generally issued against notified standard input-output norms (SION). In cases where SION is not available, authorisations are issued based on self-declared input-output norms by applicants, which are subsequently examined and finalised by sector-specific NCs.

At present, seven NCs are operational under DGFT, covering a range of export sectors. These comprise technical authorities and domain experts from relevant ministries and departments. They are responsible for fixation of SION and ad-hoc norms, recommending SION notifications and facilitating issuance of authorisations in accordance with the Foreign Trade Policy and handbook of procedures.

The functioning of NCs had been affected by capacity constraints due to a limited number of technical authorities. As of early February 2026, only twelve technical members were associated with the committees, including five serving government officers, resulting in increasing pendency due to overlapping responsibilities.

To address these challenges, a series of reforms have been introduced. These include strengthening of governance and processes; augmentation of technical capacity; and a special disposal drive for expeditious disposal of pending applications.

Detailed guidelines have been issued to ensure uniformity and consistency in the functioning of NCs. These include institutionalised scheduling of meetings on a fixed fortnightly cycle, prioritisation of long-pending cases, time-bound finalisation of meeting minutes and systematic monitoring of pendency and case ageing.

Efforts have also been made to identify recurring cases for conversion into SION to reduce repetitive approvals.

Line ministries have been requested to nominate additional technical officers to the committees to enhance sectoral expertise and reduce dependence on a limited pool of members.

As part of capacity augmentation, ten additional technical members have been nominated from various ministries, increasing the total number of technical authorities from 12 to 22.

The reforms have resulted in improved outcomes, a release from the ministry said. Between January 2026 and 7 April 2026, a total of 38 NC meetings were held, in which 3,925 cases were taken up and 1,770 cases were disposed of.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)