The Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), Ministry of Commerce & Industry is planning to enable Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT) facility for easy submission of export applications in the country. The DGFT is carrying out negotiations with public sector banks like State Bank of India, Central Bank of India and other private sector banks like ICICI and HDFC etc in this regard.

Once EFT system is in place, exporters can transmit their applications along with the application fee, as and where necessary without physically visiting either a bank or the office of DGFT.

DGFT has already become India's first digital signature enabled agency, marking a big step forward in the promotion of paperless trading in the country's foreign trade sector. It had signed an MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) with M/s. SafeScrypt Limited, a 100% subsidiary of Satyam Infoway and an affiliate of Verisign-USA, who will provide the DGFT with necessary technical support and consultancy services in this regard.

Accordingly, the infrastructure available in DGFT for Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) would now be PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) enabled and there would be seamless transmission of authorised information.

From 1st December, 2002, the Office of DGFT at New Delhi has become digital signature enabled. 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 can be electronically transmitted with digital signature, obviating the need of securing a authenticated paper copy thereof. 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 will facilitate paperless verification, processing and communication.

It is known that with the activation of EFT and digital signature facility, DGFT is to take a gigantic leap in e-governance initiative with complete paperless transaction.