The Indian port code list, and what the last character means

What a port code is on a shipping bill

Most of what is written about port codes answers a different question, and CBIC's own directory settles which. Its Customs Online Directory Enquiry System keeps them as separate registers. Port Code Sea and Port Code Air hold the five character forms, INNSA and INBOM, which identify a place for a vessel and a manifest. Customs EDI Location holds the six character ones, and that is the register an Indian export filing draws on, because the six character code names the customs station where the shipping bill is filed. A five character answer to that question is a wrong answer rather than a shorter one.

The last character is the facility: 1 a sea port, 2 a rail customs station, 4 an air cargo complex, 5 a foreign post office, 6 an inland customs point, and B a land customs station. That is why one city appears several times over: at Mumbai the sea terminal is INBOM1 and the air cargo complex at Sahar is INBOM4, and they are different customs stations, not two names for one.

A customs location code is not filing trivia. It names the station where the shipping bill is filed, and that station is where the RoDTEP scroll is generated against it. The claim itself has to be on the bill at the time of export: paragraph I(d) of ICEGATE Advisory No. 01/2021 states that if RODTEPY is not specifically claimed in the shipping bill, no RoDTEP would accrue to the exporter. The declaration and the codes that go with it are the whole of that step.

After that the sequence is out of the exporter's hands and it runs at the customs station on the bill: the goods are exported, the Export General Manifest is filed, Customs processes the bill, and the scroll is generated. Only then is there an e-scrip in the Electronic Duty Credit Ledger to sell or to spend. The port is also where the scroll can be stopped: paragraph 4.94(2) of the Handbook of Procedures 2023 provides that where the Annual RoDTEP Return has not been filed, no further scroll-out of the claims on the shipping bills is permitted "at the Customs Port of Export after the grace period of three (3) months i.e. after 30th June". If several bills have gone quiet at once rather than one, what blocks a scroll works through the causes in the order worth checking them.

Where these codes come from

Every row in this directory is ICEGATE's. The codes and the names are the customs location list that ICEGATE publishes, which is the Indian Customs Electronic Gateway itself rather than anybody's copy of it.

Nothing is inherited from a secondary list, and the reason is what happened when one was checked against ICEGATE row by row. Seven of its 362 codes appear in neither list ICEGATE publishes. It writes the Lucknow air cargo code as INLOK4, where both of ICEGATE's own documents say INLKO4. And it is missing 232 codes ICEGATE does carry, 180 of which name themselves a special economic zone or a free trade warehousing zone, and nine of which are the foreign post offices, a whole facility type that list did not carry.

The other direction is stated too. A code that appears in an older ICEGATE document but not in the list ICEGATE serves today is not carried here, because the current list is what a filing is checked against. One code in this position is a rail crossing at Radhikapur, INRDP2, which is in the 2022 document below and not in the list today.

The facility each code denotes is then checked against CBIC's own Category column, in the ICEGATE 2.0 live locations document. It covers 234 of the 586 codes and agrees with the last character on every one of them. A single disagreement fails the build of this directory rather than reaching a page.

What no source states is the format itself. Circular 28/2001-Customs dated 10 May 2001 is the instrument that introduced these codes, and CBIC's own copy of it does not render on the site today, so it is named here and not quoted. The meaning of the last character is therefore stated on these pages as what CBIC's Category column shows it to be across the 234 rows that carry one, rather than as a rule read out of a document. Anyone stating it as a rule is making the same inference from the same evidence; this page says so rather than borrowing the confidence.

What is not here is as deliberate as what is. ICEGATE's record carries no coordinates, no cargo figures and no ranking, so neither does this directory, and it names a state for only 309 of the 586. Where the record is silent, these pages are silent, and the list is checked against what ICEGATE currently publishes rather than against anyone’s copy of it.

The codes are the easy part. What the shipping bill filed at one of them is worth is the RoDTEP scheme, and what the credit becomes is a duty-credit scrip.