New Online IEC Application System – bringing ease in doing business?

Lately, Ministry of Commerce through its Foreign Trade Policymaking entity, eased out the cumbersome process of physically filing application for New, and Modification of the existing, Importer Exporter Code (IEC) number by digitalizing it.

Whichever campaign you may want to consider this initiative under; be it Digital India, Make in India or Ease of Doing Business, the central point of focus would still remain that how efficient this change has been in reducing license seeker’s efforts needed in filing up the application form for this license without compromising on speed, quality and security fronts.

Before assessing the performance of its online version, we would like to introduce you with the basic concept, utility and functioning of IEC. IEC is a mandatory code to be possessed by every exporter or importer of India before he/she starts his/her exporting or importing business. This is an identification number allotted to keep a track of various necessary details like destination countries, date of exports, value of goods shipped, product type, product quality standards, licenses possessed by exporter, incentives utilized, export proceeds realization etc. This is one primary key, in a vast and rapidly growing Indian Importer-Exporter database, through which, authorities not only track defaulters and people involved in fraudulent and malicious activities such as: smuggling, but also track utilization of export incentives, duty drawbacks, EPCGs and other duty refunds provided to the genuine requesters of these benefits. In nut shell, this code number is the unique identity of an exporter/importer which accompanies him right from inception to winding up of his Import-export business. In other words one is mandated to posses this license throughout the tenure of one’s import-export activities carried out for commercial purposes.

Coming to the process of filing, there are, generally, two types of queries with regard to IEC, (I) to file a New IEC Application and, (II) To modify/update information in the existing e-IEC or physical IEC*. For type-I, one can either apply online or offline as per one’s preference while for type-II, online mode is the only alternative available now after the Public Notice 36 /2015-2020 Dated the14 September, 2015 by DGFT, Ministry of commerce, GoI.

Filling up of new IEC application is now online for quite some time and it might have reduced the amount of work on part of authorities but it has not been digested well by the applicants yet. On one hand this initiative has done some positives such as: reducing the amount of time taken in the whole process, i.e. right from filling up the application to receiving the License in the end, enabling applicant to check status of his application online, modifying, editing and updating it as per one’s convenience. While on the other hand, this new online platform has come up with some technological glitches such as: basic browser requirement is to have IE 10 or above, which for everyone’s information can be installed on Windows 10 or above only, now you might not like this idea of first buying a new Windows 10 to get IE 10 and then to eventually fill up your online IEC application. So this option is relegated in most cases.

Another option is Google chrome which is probably the only option majority of people will start thinking about but wait! One needs to do some compatibility settings before Chrome to efficiently run this IEC application. To everyone’s surprise there are no instructions in the IEC help to do compatibility settings in Chrome, although it is not very difficult unless you google for it. There are some extensions such as IE Tab which you can add to your chrome and use it to run this one-of-a-kind application. Then comes another hurdle, if you have updated an IEC application on a computer before and you want to fill a fresh new application on the same system then you first have to clear your computer’s cache. Now, that is again like using internet in its initial days.

Now coming to the modification part, where you don’t have the option to resort to offline mode even if it gets troublesome to modify your application through online mode. Along with above minor technological drawbacks, there is another specific issue to modification requests and that is very poor mapping of old data from Govt.’s previous data storage system to present online system, which makes user to manually remove commas, colons, semi colons and many other special characters populated along while populating one’s old information filed for Physical IEC* before this new online system came into action. Then there are redundant security checks where one gets a pin on one’s phone and email address both which have to be entered simultaneously to log into the IEC system, Instead of two checks why could there not be just one check, with a secret question or something else. Also,session time out is very short. Many of these shortcomings can be considered tobe too trivial to remove from engineering angle but from overall planning angle there needs to be a serious thought to be given to improve efficiency of new system. At least, minor tech problems ought to be resolved as early as possible.

Let’s take a broad view to the issue, who all are the target users for this new IEC system? What is their exact expectation from such initiative? How much internet savvy are they? Should they really be forced to google the possible compatibility solution for their browser? Should they must be educated enough to handle such tech savvy issue before actually doing exim business? Should they seek help from a computer expert? Or should they eventually resort to the offline mode which has been prevailing for quite long? Well, if that is the case, then whole purpose of bringing ease in doing business in India would be defeated. There are many major commercial social-network websites such as; facebook.com, Tumblr.com,pinterest.com handling profiles of millions of users and many e-commerce giantsamazon.com, ebay.com, flipkart.com etc providing status tracking along with storing user information, there are many payment gateways such as paypal.com, payumoney.com etc, providing highly secure transaction environment and then there are websites of banks storing user account related sensitive information and integrating with payment gateways. All these do not ask for cache clearing,compatibility settings, removal of self populated special characters etc then why does a Govt. websites do? And above all they don’t have a long list of FAQs with instruction on how to use their website, then why does a Govt websites do?

Surprisingly, prevalence of these problems even after realizing them is unwarranted and one may wonder that whether such initiatives are actually making things easier, difficult or bringing no change at all. What all business community expects is really a simple online platform for filing application which just not appear simple on the surface but truly built simple for simplifying things!

*e-IEC is the electronic IEC, which is generated through the new Online IEC Application while physical IEC is one generated through the traditional ‘off-line mode’.