Duty-Credit Scrips in India

A duty-credit scrip is money the government owes you for exporting, paid in a form you can only spend at customs. If you import, that is a discount. If you do not, it is an asset with an expiry date and a buyer somewhere. This page covers what one is, where it comes from, what it is worth, and the two things you can do with it.

What a duty-credit scrip actually is

When you export, your goods carry embedded Indian duties and taxes that were never refunded through any other route. Sending those taxes abroad inside the price makes exports less competitive, so the government remits them. What it does not do is send you the cash. It issues a credit instead, and that credit is a duty-credit scrip. (The share market uses the same word for a listed stock; the two senses of scrip separates them if you arrived from that side.)

The scrip is recorded electronically as an e-scrip in the Electronic Duty Credit Ledger on ICEGATE, against your Importer Exporter Code. It carries a face value, a balance, a status, and an expiry. Against the basic customs duty it is worth its full face value, rupee for rupee. And it is transferable, which is the single fact the rest of this page hangs off.

Which schemes issue them

Two schemes matter today. RoDTEP, Remission of Duties and Taxes on Exported Products, is the broad one and covers exported products generally, at rates set HS-code-wise in the government's own schedule. RoSCTL, Rebate of State and Central Taxes and Levies, is the dedicated scheme for apparel and made-ups. Most exporters earn one or the other depending on what they ship, and the comparison matters because the two do not have to be worth the same on the same day.

Older schemes, MEIS and SEIS among them, issued scrips that some exporters still hold. Where the legacy scrips stand covers what is still realisable and what is not.

The four schemes, and where each stands

A scheme window closing does not shorten a scrip: an e-scrip's two-year validity runs from its creation in the ledger, whatever happens to the scheme that issued it.

Paper-era scrips then, e-scrips now

The instrument changed shape between the generations, and reading old guidance without knowing that is how the myths survive: the claims that scrips are non-transferable, or valid for a year, describe the old generation or the pre-amendment text, not the instrument you hold today.

How a scrip comes into existence

This sequence is worth knowing, because almost every "where is my scrip" problem is a stall at one of these steps rather than a lost credit.

1. You claim it on the shipping bill. The benefit is claimed at the time of export, on the bill itself, at item level. Miss the declaration and nothing downstream runs, and it cannot be added later: the RODTEPY declaration, field by field sets out exactly what has to be on the bill and the deadline that closes it.
2. The export completes and the manifest is filed. The Export General Manifest, and at a gateway port the gateway EGM, has to be filed and reconcile against the bill.
3. Customs processes the bill and generates a scroll. The scroll is the sanctioned credit against that export.
4. The scroll becomes an e-scrip in your ledger. Now it has a face value, an expiry, and a status you can read.
5. You use it, transfer it, or it expires. There is no fourth outcome.

If the chain stops before step four, why a scroll has not generated walks the causes in cheapest-first order. Eligibility and exclusions covers what the scheme leaves out by design, which is a different situation and needs no chasing.

What a scrip is worth

Two different numbers, and confusing them is where sellers lose money.

Against the basic customs duty, a scrip is worth its full face value. A scrip of a given face pays exactly that much customs duty. There is no haircut at the counter. Basic customs duty is also the only line it reaches: Regulation 6(1) of the Electronic Duty Credit Ledger Regulations, 2021 confines the credit to duties of Customs specified in the First Schedule to the Customs Tariff Act, 1975, so integrated tax and cess stay cash lines. What duties a scrip can pay works out what that does to the arithmetic on a real Bill of Entry.

In cash, a scrip is worth slightly less than face. A buyer paying you today is putting real money out now for a credit they will apply later, against duty they have not yet incurred. That timing gap, plus the risk that they cannot use it all before it lapses, is why the cash price sits under face. It is also why the price is quoted as a percentage of face rather than as a rupee figure. Why scrips trade below face goes into the mechanics.

A price above face has no economic basis, since the scrip cannot pay more duty than its face. Treat one as a warning rather than a windfall.

Where the number comes from, end to end

1. FOB to credit. The export's FOB value times the rate notified for the tariff line, Appendix 4R for RoDTEP and the textiles schedule for RoSCTL, subject to any per-unit value cap on the line. The RoDTEP calculator looks the rate up by HS code and applies the cap.
2. Credit to face value. The sanctioned credit becomes the e-scrip's face value in the ledger: the amount of basic customs duty the scrip can pay, rupee for rupee.
3. Face value to cash. Sold, the scrip realises face less a discount, and the discount belongs to that scrip on that day rather than to a published rate card.

What sets the discount on a given scrip

• Time to expiry. The dominant driver. A scrip comfortably clear of expiry is easy for a buyer to consume; a narrow window is priced like the race it is.
• Size. Face value per scrip and total lot both matter. A single large scrip is cheaper for a buyer to absorb than the same value in many small ones, because scrips transfer whole and each transfer is its own operation.
• Scheme demand. RoDTEP and RoSCTL are separate lines with their own supply and demand, so they need not sit at the same level on the same day.
• Buyer duty pipeline. Scrips are worth face against duty to importers, so when importers have more duty to cover, the number sits closer to face.
• Fresh supply. As scrolls mature at the ports and new scrips issue, heavier supply against steady demand nudges the number down a touch.

A single published rate would have to average across all five, and the averaging is where a holder loses money. That is why pricing here is per scrip, at the moment it is asked for.

Reading a price you have been quoted

A single quote in isolation cannot be judged, which is the structural problem with a market that runs on messages. Duty credit has no published benchmark to read a quote against, and how RoDTEP and RoSCTL scrips are priced covers what such a reference would be for and, just as usefully, what it is not. What a scrip is worth today covers the day-to-day question directly.

The two things you can do with one

Use it, if you import

A scrip applied against an assessed Bill of Entry pays the basic customs duty at full face. Regulation 6(1) of the Electronic Duty Credit Ledger Regulations, 2021 confines it to the duties of customs in the First Schedule to the Customs Tariff Act, 1975, so the IGST and cess lines on that same bill are still settled in cash. Since the scrip cost less than face to acquire, the duty costs you less than paying it in cash. Paying customs duty with scrips covers the mechanics, and how importers save covers the arithmetic.

Sell it, if you do not

A great many exporters never import, which means the credit is worth nothing to them in its native form. Selling it is not a workaround; it is the only way that exporter realises the remission at all. The transfer executes on ICEGATE from your IEC to the buyer's, and the transfer guide covers the sequence.

The risk in selling has never been the transfer. It is the gap between handing over a scrip and being paid for it, which is what settlement is really about.

How a scrip sale actually settles

Pages ranking on this query still assert that no formal marketplace exists for duty-credit scrips, so a sale is described as a private hunt: days of calls through a broker chain to find a counterparty, a quoted price and a paid price that never appear on the same page, and, between the handshake and the money, a window in which one side has always gone first. How scrips are sold today documents that trade as it is actually conducted, and the buy side has the same shape from the other chair.

That description is out of date. On an exchange the same sale is three commitments a seller can hold us to: a firm offer priced for that scrip and held for sixty seconds; settlement in which the buyer's funds are secured before the scrip moves; and payout the same business day, with a bank UTR on the record. The buyer's side mirrors it, with the ask capped at face value, because a scrip cannot pay more duty than its face. What each route costs, and who carries which risk, is the comparison the sell walkthrough draws out channel by channel.

Tax, law, and provenance

The sale of a duty-credit scrip is exempt, classified under HSN 4907, and since 5 July 2022 the sale value is also excluded from the exempt-supply figure that drives input tax credit reversal, so selling scrips does not force a reversal of common credit. The instruments behind both halves of that sentence, and the paperwork of an exempt sale, are set out in GST on duty-credit scrips and the accounting guide. Trading scrips is entirely legal, as the legal position sets out; e-scrips are transferable by design and the transfer is recorded on the government's own ledger.

The real question for a buyer is not legality but provenance: whether the specific scrip in front of you came from a clean export chain. Are scrips safe to buy and how provenance screening works cover what to check. Scrip scams covers what goes wrong when nobody does.

Where Scriphouse comes in

Scriphouse is an exchange for these instruments. Scrips arrive in your ledger on their own as scrolls mature. Selling one is a single firm offer, priced for that scrip at the moment you ask and held for sixty seconds, rather than a round of calls. Settlement is delivery-versus-payment: the buyer's funds are secured before the scrip moves, and the payout lands the same business day with a UTR. On the buy side, scrips cover an assessed Bill of Entry instead of cash.

If you hold scrips, if you pay customs duty, or if you run other people's IECs, each side has its own walkthrough. Pricing covers what a settled trade costs.

Common questions