How to Claim RoDTEP in the Shipping Bill: the RODTEPY Declaration, Step by Step

The claim is the whole thing

RoDTEP is not applied for after the fact. Regulation 2(b) of the Electronic Duty Credit Ledger Regulations, 2021 defines a claim as "a claim of duty credit under the Schemes, made by an exporter in the shipping bill or bill of export by providing the appropriate declaration at the item level in the said shipping bill or bill of export in the customs automated system". Every word of that is load bearing: in the shipping bill, at item level, as a declaration, in the system.

ICEGATE puts the consequence more bluntly than any regulation does. 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". There is no later form, no condonation route named in the advisory, and no scroll to chase. The credit simply never comes into existence.

The exact declarations, field by field

Paragraph I(c) of the same advisory specifies what goes in the SW_INFO_TYPE table of the shipping bill, for each item:

• INFO TYPE = DTY
• INFO QFR = RDT
• INFO CODE = RODTEPY if RoDTEP is availed, or RODTEPN if it is not
• INFO MSR, the quantity of the item in the statistical unit of quantity prescribed under the Customs Tariff Act for that RITC line
• INFO UQC, the unit of quantity code for the figure entered in INFO MSR

Then, for every item where RODTEPY is claimed, a second entry goes in the Statement table: STATEMENT TYPE = DEC and STATEMENT CODE = RD001. The advisory explains what that code stands for, which is that "the exporter has made the necessary declaration as enclosed in Annexure B, while claiming RoDTEP benefit".

Two things follow from the shape of this. It is per item, not per shipping bill, so a bill can carry RODTEPY on some lines and RODTEPN on others, and a line left out is simply a line with no claim on it. And it is a code, not a narrative, so a claim is either correctly formed or it is not there at all.

What RD001 actually commits you to

The statement code is short. The declaration behind it, set out in Annexure B to Advisory No. 01/2021, is three undertakings, and they are worth reading before you sign them into a thousand shipping bills:

• To abide by the provisions of the RoDTEP scheme, "including conditions, restrictions, exclusions and time-limits", and the relevant notifications and regulations as amended from time to time.
• That the claim "is not with respect to any duties or taxes or levies which are exempted or remitted or credited under any other mechanism outside RoDTEP". This is the no double remission undertaking, and it is the one that interacts with other export schemes.
• To preserve and produce documents relating to the exported goods for audit, "in the manner and for the time period prescribed in the Customs Audit Regulations, 2018".

That second undertaking is the reason a customs broker cannot treat RODTEPY as a default tick. Whether a particular export is on the right side of it is a question about the other benefits taken on those goods, and it is answered before the bill is filed, not after a scroll fails to appear.

There is no schedule serial number, and that catches people out

Exporters used to Drawback expect to look up a serial number against a schedule. Paragraph I(b) of the advisory says explicitly that "unlike Drawback, there is no separate serial numbers based on a schedule for claiming RoDTEP", because the rates are notified against the RITC code itself, so no separate code or schedule serial number is declared.

The practical effect is that your HS classification is doing double duty. It decides the tariff treatment and it decides the rate that will be applied to the claim, with no second field to correct it. A line declared under a code that does not carry a rate produces a claim that computes to nothing, and that is a classification conversation, not a portal problem. How RoDTEP rates are calculated covers the schedule side of this.

The deadline nobody tells you about: the EGM

The same paragraph I(d) carries the sentence that decides whether a mistake is fixable: "No changes in the claim will be allowed after the filing of the EGM."

That is the real deadline on a RoDTEP claim, and it is not a date. It is an event, it usually belongs to the shipping line or the freight forwarder rather than to you, and it commonly happens within days of the vessel sailing. By the time an exporter notices in the ledger that nothing arrived, the window closed months ago.

What happens after the bill is filed

Paragraph II of Advisory No. 01/2021 sets out the processing. Shipping bills carrying a RoDTEP or Drawback claim are sent to the Risk Management System after the EGM is filed, and on the RMS input they either go to an officer for processing or are facilitated straight to the scroll queue. Once processed, the bill moves to the respective scroll queue. The advisory also notes that a suspension placed on an exporter or a shipping bill for Drawback applies equally to scrolling out of RoDTEP benefits.

Regulation 3(3) of the Electronic Duty Credit Ledger Regulations, 2021 then provides that once the claim is allowed, a scroll for duty credit is generated by the proper officer in the customs automated system, and that separate scrolls are generated for each Scheme. Regulation 3(4) makes the scroll details visible to the exporter in the system.

From there it is a ledger question rather than a shipping bill question. If the scroll has not appeared, RoDTEP scroll not generated works through the causes in order.

The clock that starts at the scroll

One thing at this stage is easy to miss and expensive to miss. Regulation 4(1) gives the exporter the option to combine duty credits from one or more shipping bills and carry them forward into an e-scrip, customs station wise, "within a period of one year from the date of generation of the scroll". The proviso then says that if the exporter does not exercise that option within the year, the system creates the e-scrip automatically: the credits in each scroll are combined customs station wise for each Scheme into a single e-scrip in that exporter's ledger.

So the credit is not lost at the one year mark. What is lost is your control over how it is packaged, and packaging is not cosmetic: Regulation 7(2) provides that duty credit is transferred at a time for the entire amount in the e-scrip and that transfer in part is not permitted, so the shape of the e-scrip decides what you can sell and to whom. Face value explained covers why lot size moves what a scrip fetches.

What we could not establish

• Whether a missed RODTEPY can ever be corrected. The advisory says no changes after the EGM and names no remedy. We found no notification, circular or public trade notice creating an amendment or condonation route for an unclaimed RoDTEP benefit. That is not the same as proof that no relief has ever been granted in a particular case, and we make no claim either way. What we will not do is tell an exporter there is a route back when the instrument says there is not.
• The current position on Advance Authorisation, EOU and jobbing. Paragraph I(e) of Advisory No. 01/2021 records that the system carried checks to disallow RoDTEP where the benefit of certain other schemes such as Advance Authorisation, EOU and jobbing had been availed. That advisory is dated 1 January 2021 and the scheme's coverage has been revised by later DGFT notifications, so the January 2021 text is not a safe statement of today's position. Check the current DGFT notification for your category before you rely on it.
• Whether RODTEPN is ever the safer declaration. The declaration is a binary, the RD001 undertaking is about double remission, and no instrument we found tells an exporter how to resolve a genuinely uncertain case at filing time. That is a judgement your customs broker and your tax adviser make on the facts of the consignment, and we are not going to make it for you in a guide.

Checked against the instruments named on this page: the primary sources themselves, not anyone’s copy of them.

Where this leaves the scrip

A correctly claimed line becomes a scroll, a scroll becomes an e-scrip, and an e-scrip is either used against your own imports or sold. If you do not import, selling is the only way you see the remission at all: how to sell RoDTEP scrips covers that side, and the exporter page shows how it runs on Scriphouse.

Frequently asked questions

What is the RODTEPY declaration in a shipping bill?

It is the INFO CODE value that claims RoDTEP on an export item. Under paragraph I(c) of ICEGATE Advisory No. 01/2021 the exporter declares INFO TYPE = DTY, INFO QFR = RDT and INFO CODE = RODTEPY in the SW_INFO_TYPE table for each item, with INFO MSR and INFO UQC carrying the quantity and its unit, plus a Statement table entry of STATEMENT TYPE = DEC and STATEMENT CODE = RD001.

What happens if RODTEPY is not claimed on the shipping bill?

No RoDTEP accrues. 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, and the same paragraph provides that no changes in the claim are allowed after the Export General Manifest is filed.

Can a RoDTEP claim be amended after the shipping bill is filed?

Only until the Export General Manifest is filed. Paragraph I(d) of ICEGATE Advisory No. 01/2021 says no changes in the claim will be allowed after the filing of the EGM. We found no instrument creating a later correction route, and we do not assume one exists.

Is RoDTEP claimed per shipping bill or per item?

Per item. Regulation 2(b) of the Electronic Duty Credit Ledger Regulations, 2021 defines the claim as a declaration made at the item level, and the ICEGATE declarations are specified for each item, so one bill can carry RODTEPY on some lines and RODTEPN on others.

Do I need a schedule serial number to claim RoDTEP?

No. Paragraph I(b) of ICEGATE Advisory No. 01/2021 says that unlike Drawback there are no schedule based serial numbers for RoDTEP, because rates are notified against the RITC code, so no separate code or serial number is declared.

How long do I have to turn a scroll into an e-scrip?

One year. Regulation 4(1) of the Electronic Duty Credit Ledger Regulations, 2021 lets the exporter combine scroll credits into an e-scrip within one year of the scroll being generated, and the proviso provides that if that option is not exercised the system creates a single e-scrip per customs station per Scheme automatically. The credit is not lost, but you lose the choice of how it is packaged.