Delhi is deciding the future of RoDTEP this week
The Remission of Duties and Taxes on Exported Products scheme, RoDTEP, refunds taxes that end up inside an exported product's cost but are not reimbursed any other way: central, state and local levies such as duties on the fuel and electricity used in production. The current extension expires on September 30, and as of this week, no further extension has been notified.
What is on the table
The Commerce Ministry has sought a five-year extension and is in discussion with the Department of Expenditure, the finance ministry wing that has to approve the money.
Reports put the proposed budget for the extended scheme at about ₹23,000 crore.
Refunds range from 0.3% to 3.9% of an export's free-on-board value, the invoice value at the port of export, with rates notified separately for each eight-digit HS code.
Why the uncertainty matters
This year has already been unsettled: a 50% cap on benefits introduced on February 23 was withdrawn a month later, and the scheme then received only a six-month extension from April.
The budget allocation fell from ₹18,232 crore in 2025-26 to ₹10,000 crore this fiscal.
Short extensions make multi-month export contracts hard to price, because the refund is part of the margin being quoted.
The bigger trade picture
For an engineering exporter working on thin margins, a refund of 1 to 2% of invoice value can decide whether an order gets quoted at all, especially in a year when the US, UK and EU have all raised barriers of their own. A five-year extension would turn RoDTEP from a quarter-to-quarter question into something that can be built into pricing. A lapse, even a short one, would do the opposite.