Export Incentives in India: 2026 Scheme Guide

Export incentives in India are government measures (duty remissions, tax refunds, subsidised credit, and duty-free imports) that the Ministry of Commerce and Industry uses to make Indian exports more competitive by returning embedded duties and taxes that no other mechanism refunds.

They are administered mainly through the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), with most benefits paid out as transferable duty-credit scrips or bank credits.

As of mid-2026, the main export incentive schemes in India are:

• RoDTEP: refunds embedded central, state, and local duties and taxes on exported goods, as a percentage of FOB value.
• Duty Drawback: refunds customs duty paid on imported inputs used to make an export product.
• EPCG: allows duty-free import of capital goods against an export obligation.
• Advance Authorisation: allows duty-free import of inputs physically used in the export product.
• RoSCTL: rebate of state and central taxes and levies for apparel and made-up textile exporters.
• Interest subvention: subsidised pre- and post-shipment rupee export credit for eligible MSME exporters, relaunched under the DGFT's Export Promotion Mission (Niryat Protsahan) in January 2026.

Note upfront: every one of these benefits ultimately hinges on realising your export proceeds in India and evidencing the foreign inward remittance. Get paid, prove it, then claim.

Two legacy schemes also still show up in searches but are closed: MEIS (withdrawn January 2021, WTO-inconsistent) and SEIS for service exporters (discontinued for services on or after 1 April 2020).

The types of export incentives fall into four buckets: duty remission (RoDTEP, drawback), duty exemption on inputs and capital goods (Advance Authorisation, EPCG), tax rebate (RoSCTL), and credit support (interest subvention).

Which one applies to you depends on what you export and how. Merchant exporters, manufacturer exporters, and units in an EOU export oriented unit or SEZ each have a slightly different eligibility path.

Here is the current status of each scheme, dated so you are not acting on a stale 2021 list still ranking on Google.

RoDTEP (Remission of Duties and Taxes on Export Products) refunds the duties and taxes baked into your export costs that no other scheme gives back, things like fuel excise, mandi tax, and electricity duty.

It is credited as a transferable e-scrip on ICEGATE, based on your shipping bill.

RoDTEP rates generally run from about 0.3% to 4.3% of FOB value, with most product lines sitting in the 0.3% to 0.8% band.

Your exact rate is fixed by HS code in Appendix 4R (for standard DTA exports) and Appendix 4RE (for AA, SEZ, and EOU exports).

Importantly, RoDTEP benefits were restored for Advance Authorisation holders, SEZ units, and EOUs from June 2025, ending an earlier withdrawal. For the mechanics, rate lookup, and claim steps, see the detailed RoDTEP scheme guide.

They solve different problems. RoDTEP gives you cash-equivalent scrips after export to refund embedded taxes. EPCG lets you import machinery duty-free before or during production, in exchange for a promise to export a set value later.

If you are buying capital equipment to scale exports, the EPCG benefits route usually beats treating RoDTEP as your only lever.

The two are not mutually exclusive: a manufacturer can use EPCG for machinery and still claim RoDTEP on each shipment.

Yes. You can claim both RoDTEP and duty drawback on the same shipping bill, because they refund different things: drawback covers customs duty on imported inputs, while RoDTEP covers embedded central, state, and local taxes that drawback does not touch.

The one rule: the same duty component cannot be counted twice.

You declare your intent to claim on the shipping bill at the time of export, so the correct declarations on your export invoice and shipping bill matter. Miss the declaration and you forfeit the scrip.

This stacking is exactly why goods exporters can recover a meaningful slice of FOB. See the worked example below.

This is the honest answer most pages bury: as of mid-2026, there is no direct export incentive scheme for service exporters equivalent to RoDTEP.

RoDTEP is goods-only, and SEIS, the scheme that used to reward service exports with duty-credit scrips, was discontinued for services rendered on or after 1 April 2020 and has not been replaced.

What the SEIS closure means for you

If you export services (IT, ITeS, consulting, design, SaaS), you cannot claim RoDTEP or duty drawback, and SEIS is gone.

What you do get is a different, arguably more valuable benefit: your service exports are zero-rated under GST.

Handled correctly, that means no GST on the export and a refund of input tax credit.

That refund is the real "incentive" for most service exporters, and the conditions are set out in export of services under GST.

What IT and software exporters can still use

Software and IT exporters can look at EPCG (for capital goods), the interest subvention on export credit if you are an eligible MSME, and STPI-linked benefits.

If you operate under a Software Technology Parks scheme, the framework in STPI software exports covers duty and procedural relief that still applies to service and software exporters today.

Eligibility starts with two basics: an Importer Exporter Code (IEC) from DGFT, and a registered exporter profile. Beyond that, eligibility is scheme-specific. Rather than an undifferentiated list, follow this decision path.

Getting the IEC and declaration right

Whatever your path, you need an IEC, and for services you need the correct RBI purpose code for inward remittance on your receipts so your realisation is evidenced cleanly.

Goods exporters declare the RoDTEP and drawback claim on the shipping bill at export time.

Claiming e-scrips, and why they get delayed

For goods, once the shipping bill is processed, RoDTEP and drawback amounts are credited as e-scrips on ICEGATE, which you can use to pay import duties or transfer.

The practitioner pain here is timing, not eligibility: scrips can take weeks to appear after the shipping bill is filed, often because the export proceeds have not been realised or the EDPMS entry has not been closed.

The scrip follows the money, not just the shipment.

Take a goods exporter shipping a consignment with an FOB value of ₹50,00,000. These rates are illustrative: your actual rates are fixed by HS code.

On a thin export margin, recovering 2% to 3% of FOB back as scrips and refunds is often the difference between a profitable and a break-even order. For high-drawback product lines the combined figure can climb higher.

The catch every exporter hits: none of this pays out until the proceeds are realised and evidenced.

Here is the thread that ties the whole system together, and that almost no roundup connects: your incentive claims, GST refunds, and eBRC or EDPMS closure all hinge on getting your export proceeds into India and producing a clean forex-receipt document.

The scrip, the refund, and the eBRC all wait on the money landing and being proven.

Realising your proceeds on time

Every benefit assumes timely realisation and repatriation of export proceeds within the RBI-permitted period.

Miss the window or leave EDPMS entries open, and scrips stall and refunds get held. Slow SWIFT wires and unclear paperwork are the usual culprits.

FIRA as your forex-receipt evidence

The document your CA and bank need is the FIRA, the Foreign Inward Remittance Advice, the proof that a specific export payment reached you in convertible foreign exchange.

This is the same evidence that closes EDPMS and supports a GST refund claim.

Xflow does not file scheme claims: that stays with your CA or DGFT consultant.

What Xflow does is remove the realisation bottleneck for cross-border payments for service exporters and goods exporters: receiving accounts, next-business-day (T+1) settlement in INR, live mid-market rates, and auto-issued eFIRA so the forex-receipt evidence lands with the payment.

Xflow holds final RBI Payment Aggregator Cross-Border (PA-CB) authorisation for both exports and imports (as of February 2026). Frame it as compliance relief: the paperwork that releases your incentives is generated for you, not chased after.