The RoDTEP Scheme

RoDTEP is how India gives an exporter back the taxes that were already inside the goods when they left the country. It is not a subsidy and it is not paid in cash. It is a remission, issued as a transferable credit that can only be spent at customs. This page covers what the scheme is, who it is for, what it leaves out, how a rate is arrived at, and how long it is notified to run.

What RoDTEP stands for, and what it actually does

RoDTEP is the Remission of Duties and Taxes on Exported Products scheme. It sits in Chapter 4 of the Foreign Trade Policy 2023, and each continuation of it is notified by the Directorate General of Foreign Trade under Section 5 of the Foreign Trade (Development and Regulation) Act, 1992 read with Para 1.02 of that Policy.

Paragraph 4.54 states the objective in one breath: to refund currently un-refunded duties, taxes and levies, at the Central, State and local level, borne on the exported product, including the prior stage cumulative indirect taxes on goods and services used in producing it, and the indirect taxes borne in distributing it. Paragraph 4.54 also draws the line that keeps the scheme from doubling up: the rebate is not available in respect of duties and taxes already exempted, remitted or credited elsewhere.

So the scheme is not an incentive for exporting. It is a correction. A product that leaves India carrying Indian electricity duty, state excise on fuel, mandi tax and the stamp duty on the paperwork behind it is a product exporting Indian taxes to a foreign buyer, and nothing in the GST refund chain reaches those. RoDTEP is the instrument for the residue.

Who is eligible

Eligibility is decided by the schedule, not by an application. If the eight digit HS code you export under carries a notified rate, the export earns credit; if it does not, it earns nothing. There are two schedules and they are not the same:

• Appendix 4R carries the rates and per unit value caps for exports from Domestic Tariff Area units.
• Appendix 4RE carries them for products manufactured by Advance Authorisation holders other than deemed exports, by Export Oriented Units, and by Special Economic Zone units. The rates in it are lower.

Those two categories have not always moved together, and the gap has been real rather than theoretical: RoDTEP for Advance Authorisation, EOU and SEZ units covers the period in 2025 when eligibility genuinely lapsed for one of them and not the other.

One eligibility condition is not in the schedule at all and catches exporters out. Paragraph 4.54 provides that the rebate is subject to the receipt of sale proceeds within the time allowed under the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999, failing which the rebate is deemed never to have been allowed. The credit is issued without waiting for realisation, but it is not unconditional once issued.

What the scheme leaves out

Paragraph 4.55 lists the categories that earn nothing. As published they run from (i) to (xi), and the substance of them is this:

• Exports of imported goods covered by Para 2.46 of the Policy, and exports through trans-shipment, meaning goods originating in a third country and trans-shipped through India.
• Products subject to a minimum export price or to an export duty.
• Products restricted or prohibited for export under Schedule 2 of the export policy in the ITC (HS).
• Deemed exports.
• Supplies of products manufactured by Domestic Tariff Area units to SEZ or FTWZ units.
• Products manufactured partly or wholly in a warehouse under section 65 of the Customs Act, 1962, and products manufactured or exported availing the benefit of Notification No. 32/1997-Customs dated 1 April 1997.
• Exports for which electronic documentation has not been generated in ICEGATE EDI, and exports from non-EDI ports.
• Goods taken into use after manufacture.

Paragraph 4.55A reserves the Government's right to move any category in or out later, so this list is a snapshot of a schedule rather than a settled boundary. Eligibility and exclusions works through what each of them means for a real consignment, and RoDTEP and duty drawback together covers the question exporters ask most often about overlap.

How a rate is arrived at

A RoDTEP rate is not negotiated and it is not a percentage of the tax you actually paid. Paragraph 4.54 provides that ceiling rates are determined by a committee in the Department of Revenue, Drawback Division, with representation from the Department of Commerce and DGFT, line ministries and experts, on the sectors prioritised by the Department of Commerce and the Department of Revenue. The Department of Commerce then decides the degree of benefit within those ceilings and notifies it.

What is notified against each eight digit HS code is a rate as a percentage of FOB value, with a value cap in rupees per unit where one applies. Where both are present, the lower of the two binds, and for some items a fixed amount per unit is notified instead. That arithmetic decides what a shipping bill is worth, and how RoDTEP rates are calculated works it through on a real line. The RoDTEP calculator does the same arithmetic on your own HS code and names which of the two is binding.

Two structural facts about the rate are worth holding on to, because between them they explain almost every change the scheme has ever made. Paragraph 4.54 provides that the overall outlay is finalised by the Ministry of Finance in consultation with the Department of Commerce, and that the scheme operates in a budgetary framework for each financial year, with calibrations and revisions made as and when required so that projected remissions stay within the approved budget. No arrears or contingent liabilities carry into the next year. A RoDTEP rate is therefore a budget instrument as much as a tax one, and it can move mid-year for reasons that have nothing to do with your product.

Residual questions on the scheme go to an inter-ministerial committee named the RoDTEP Policy Committee, chaired by DGFT, whose decisions Paragraph 4.58 makes binding.

How a claim becomes a credit

The scheme touches an export at four points, and almost every "where is my RoDTEP" problem is a stall at one of them rather than a lost entitlement.

1. The claim is made on the shipping bill. At the time of export, at item level. It cannot be added afterwards, which makes this the one step in the chain that cannot be repaired: the RODTEPY declaration, field by field sets out 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 has to be filed and to reconcile against the bill.
3. Customs processes the bill and generates a scroll. The scroll is the sanctioned credit against that export. If it does not appear, why a scroll has not generated walks the causes in cheapest-first order.
4. The scroll becomes a duty credit in the ledger. Paragraph 4.54 provides that the scheme is implemented through end to end digitisation of the issuance of the rebate in the form of a transferable duty credit or electronic scrip, maintained in an electronic ledger by the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs. That is the point at which the scheme stops and the Electronic Duty Credit Ledger Regulations, 2021 take over.

What the credit can then pay is narrow and worth knowing before you price anything against it. Paragraph 4.56 provides that e-scrips are used only for payment of duty of Customs leviable under the First Schedule to the Customs Tariff Act, 1975, which is basic customs duty. Integrated tax and compensation cess on the same Bill of Entry stay cash lines. What duties a scrip can pay works out what that does to the arithmetic.

The rate history, and the month it was cut in half

The scheme has been continued by short notification rather than standing entitlement since it took effect for exports from 1 January 2021, and 2026 was the year that pattern became visible to everyone holding credit. The sequence, each step read out of the notification itself:

• 23 February 2026. Notification No. 60/2025-26 limited the applicable rates for all HS lines in Appendix 4R and Appendix 4RE to fifty per cent of the existing rates, and where applicable fifty per cent of the notified value caps, with immediate effect. Its stated ground was rationalisation. Notification 60/2025-26
• 24 February 2026. A corrigendum took ITC (HS) Chapters 01 to 24 back out of that cut, so the reduced rates did not apply to exports falling under them. Corrigendum to Notification 60/2025-26
• 23 March 2026. Notification No. 66/2025-26 restored the rates and value caps as applicable on 22 February 2026 and superseded 60/2025-26 and its corrigendum, except as respects things done before the supersession. A corrigendum of the same date corrected the restoration period to read from 23 March 2026 to 31 March 2026. Notification 66/2025-26 and its corrigendum
• 31 March 2026. Notification No. 74/2025-26 continued the scheme for all eligible export products for a further six months with effect from 1 April 2026 to 30 September 2026, with the Appendix 4R and Appendix 4RE rates and value caps as applicable on 31 March 2026 continuing unchanged. Notification 74/2025-26
• 30 April 2026. Notification No. 15/2026-27 realigned the RoDTEP schedule to the First Schedule of the Customs Tariff Act, 1975 as amended by the Fourth Schedule of the Finance Act (No. 3 of 2026), with effect from 1 May 2026: 142 tariff lines added at the eight digit level, 50 deleted, and the description of 2 changed. Notification 15/2026-27

What the scheme is budgeted at

Because Paragraph 4.54 ties the scheme to an annual outlay, the Expenditure Budget is the closest thing to a forward signal that exists in public. The Notes on Demands for Grants 2026-2027, Demand No. 37, carry these figures for RoDTEP:

• Rs 18,313.06 crore actually spent in 2024-25.
• Rs 18,232.50 crore at budget estimate for 2025-26, and the same at revised estimate.
• Rs 10,000.00 crore at budget estimate for 2026-27.

The same document carries one sentence that matters more than the numbers: it is proposed to converge the RoDTEP and RoSCTL schemes as part of the Export Promotion Mission after appraisal and approval. Expenditure Budget, Demand No. 37

Read that as what it says. It is a proposal, conditional on appraisal and approval, and no instrument has notified an end to either scheme on the strength of it. We are not going to tell you what it means for next April, because nobody who is honest can.

Where the scheme stands

One caution, because it will cost you otherwise. DGFT's own RoDTEP landing page is not a reliable statement of the current position. The newest extension listed on it has lagged the notification register by months: Notification No. 74/2025-26 was absent from that page nearly half a year after it took effect, while the page still led with the extension to 31 March 2026. The notification register carried it correctly, dated 31 March 2026. A summary page can lag the notification that governs. The notification cannot lag itself, which is why every date on this page is read out of one.

If you are holding credit rather than planning exports, the scheme clock is not your clock. A duty credit already created in the ledger runs for two years from the date of its creation under Regulation 6(2) of the Electronic Duty Credit Ledger Regulations, 2021, and Regulation 7(3) provides that its validity does not change on transfer, whatever happens to the scheme in September. When a scrip expires covers that clock properly, and is RoDTEP still available covers what an end date would and would not do to credit already earned.

What we could not establish

Four things we went looking for and could not settle from an official source. They are here rather than smoothed over, because a page about a scheme that runs on short notifications, and contained no uncertainty, would not be worth reading.

• Whether the scheme continues past 30 September 2026. Nothing extending it has been notified. The convergence proposal in the Expenditure Budget is expressly conditional on appraisal and approval, and a proposal is not a sunset. We are not going to read a tea leaf on a page a business might plan against.
• The ground for the February 2026 rate cut. Notification 60/2025-26 gives its subject as rationalisation of RoDTEP rates and states its effect. It does not explain itself, and we found no Government release accompanying it. The budgetary framework in Paragraph 4.54 is the mechanism that permits a mid-year calibration; whether that was the reason here is not something the instrument says.
• A twelfth ineligible category. Paragraph 4.55B refers to categories (x), (xi) and (xii) of Paragraph 4.55, but the list as DGFT publishes it in Chapter 4 runs to (xi). We are naming the mismatch rather than guessing at what the twelfth would be.
• What happens to a claim on an export shipped before the end date but scrolled after it. The instruments tie duty credit to the export and the shipping bill rather than to the date of scrolling. No notification addresses the transition expressly, and we have not seen it tested. Treat it as a reading rather than a settled rule.

Verified against the instruments named on this page: the DGFT notification register and the notification PDFs themselves, Chapter 4 of the Foreign Trade Policy 2023 as DGFT publishes it, and the Expenditure Budget's Notes on Demands for Grants 2026-2027. The scheme moves by notification, and where a commercial decision turns on it, the notification as published governs. We track amendments to the instruments cited here and date this page to the last check.

RoDTEP against the other schemes

RoDTEP is the broad scheme and covers exported products generally. Apparel and made-ups are carved out of it and served by RoSCTL instead, which is a Ministry of Textiles scheme on its own clock and its own budget line. RoDTEP against RoSCTL covers which of the two an exporter earns and why the two credits need not be worth the same on the same day. Older schemes, MEIS and SEIS among them, are closed to new exports; where the legacy scrips stand covers what is still realisable.

What this means if you hold the credit

A remission you cannot spend is not a remission. An exporter who does not import has no native use for a RoDTEP credit at all, and the only way it becomes money is a transfer. Scriphouse is an exchange for exactly that: one firm offer on your own credit, priced at the moment you ask and held for sixty seconds, with settlement the same business day and a bank UTR against it. The sell side covers what that looks like end to end, and the instrument itself covers what you are actually holding.

Common questions