The Hindu Business Line : DGFT enters digital era

IN the run-up to the introduction of electronic data interchange (EDI) for cutting down transaction cost to industry and trade, the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), a trade facilitating agency for exporters, has become the country's first digital signature enabled agency.

This marks a big leap forward in the promotion of paperless trading in the country's foreign trade domain, according to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.

The DGFT on Thursday signed a memorandum of understanding with SafeScrypt Ltd, which would provide the DGFT with necessary technical support and consultancy services. Accordingly, the infrastructure available in DGFT for EDI would now be PKI (public key infrastructure) enabled and there would be seamless transmission of authorised information, according to an official release.

All the notifications issued by the DGFT are being signed with encrypted digital signature. As a result, all Exim notifications, public notices and in course of time, licences issued by DGFT could be electronically transmitted with digital signatures, obviating the need of securing an authenticated paper copy. The exporting community who apply for import/export licences, importer exporter code (IEC) would now be able to interact with DGFT on a secured electronic platform which would enable paperless verification, processing and communication. From December 1, 2002, the DGFT office at New Delhi has become digital signature enabled.

The office of DGFT is taking steps to enable electronic fund transfer (EFT) facility so that the exporters could transmit their applications along with the application fee as and where necessary without physically visiting either a bank or the office of DGFT. Negotiations are under way with other public sector banks such as State Bank of India, Central Bank of India and other private sector banks such as ICICI and HDFC. It is expected that shortly with the EFT facility being made functional, the simultaneous activation of EFT and digital signature would enable DGFT to take a huge leap in E-governance initiative with complete paperless transaction.

With this new laurel, the DGFT is the first Government department to have become digital signature enabled. The Controller of Certifying Authority (CCA) has permitted SafeScrypt Ltd, a 100 per cent subsidiary of Satyam Infoway and an affiliate of Verisign, US as the first licenced Certifying Authority under the IT Act 2000. Subsequently, TCS Ltd and Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology (IDRBT), Hyderabad have also become Certifying Authorities (CAs). National Informatics System (NIC) and Central Board of Excise and Customs are also in the process of obtaining licence to become CS to grant digital signature facility.

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