RoDTEP Explained: What Exporters Need to Know Before 30 September 2026

If you export from India, RoDTEP is probably sitting in your costing sheet as a number you subtract from your landed cost. That number has an expiry date on it, and the date is Wednesday 30 September 2026.

This page explains what the scheme actually refunds, how a claim is really made — the part that goes wrong most often is a single field on the shipping bill — and what the expiry does and does not mean. It is written for exporters and for the people who file their documents, not for policy readers.

What RoDTEP is, in one paragraph

RoDTEP stands for Remission of Duties and Taxes on Exported Products. Its stated purpose is to neutralise the taxes and duties borne by an exported product that are not credited, remitted or refunded through any other route. That is a narrower idea than it sounds. It is not a subsidy on your sale and it is not a rebate of GST, which already has its own refund mechanism. It is meant to cover the embedded levies that fall outside the GST credit chain.

The levies the scheme is designed to address include VAT and excise duty on fuel used in transport, in generating electricity and in running machinery; electricity duty; mandi tax; municipal and property taxes; stamp duty on export documents; and un-creditable GST on specified inputs. Those are costs that sit inside your product and cannot be recovered any other way.

The scheme applies to goods manufactured in India and has been open to all exporters irrespective of turnover or status since 1 January 2021.

The two appendices, and why your rate may not be the rate you read

RoDTEP rates are not a single list. They sit in two schedules and the difference matters before you quote anything:

• Appendix 4R carries the rates for ordinary DTA exports — the standard case.
• Appendix 4RE carries the rates applicable to exports made under Advance Authorisation, and by Export Oriented Units and units in Special Economic Zones.

The rates in the two schedules are not the same, and the 4RE rates are generally the lower of the two. Both are notified against ITC (HS) codes at eight digits, and many lines carry a value cap — a per-unit ceiling in rupees that limits the benefit regardless of what the percentage works out to on your invoice. A high percentage against a low cap is a low benefit. Read the cap, not just the rate.

One trap worth naming plainly, because a lot of material still gets it wrong. Many guides published online list SEZ units, Export Oriented Units and Advance Authorisation exports as ineligible for RoDTEP. That was true for a period. It is not the current position: DGFT Notification No. 11/2025-26 dated 26 May 2025 restored RoDTEP for Advance Authorisation holders, Special Economic Zones and Export Oriented Units with effect from 1 June 2025, and Appendix 4RE is the schedule that covers them. If you are an SEZ or EOU exporter and you stopped claiming because a guide told you that you could not, that is worth revisiting with your own consultant against the current appendices.

The one field that decides whether you get paid — RODTEPY

This is the part that costs exporters real money, and it is not a rate question. It is a data-entry question at the moment of filing.

To claim RoDTEP, the intention to claim must be declared on the shipping bill, at the time of export. For each eligible item, RODTEPY is declared in the INFO CODE field of the shipping bill’s SW_INFO_TYPE table, along with the quantity in the prescribed statistical unit.

If that declaration is not made, the benefit for that shipment is gone. Not delayed — gone. It cannot be added afterwards by filing an application, and there is no amendment route that restores it. A shipment worth a meaningful rebate can be lost on a field that takes one second to fill.

This is squarely the customs broker’s job, at the moment the shipping bill is filed. It is one of the checks that belongs in a documentation review before filing rather than in a reconciliation afterwards, and it is part of what we look at on customs clearance work for exporters out of Gujarat. If you file your own bills, make it a standing item on your pre-filing checklist — alongside everything else on the export and import documents checklist.

How the claim actually runs, after the ship sails

The declaration is the gate. The rest is a sequence on ICEGATE:

1. The shipping bill carries the RODTEPY declaration, item by item, with statistical quantity.
2. The Export General Manifest is filed. Processing of the claim does not begin until the EGM is in. A pending EGM is one of the ordinary reasons a claim appears to have stalled when nothing is actually wrong with it.
3. The exporter is registered on ICEGATE with a valid Class 3 digital signature.
4. A RoDTEP credit ledger account is created on ICEGATE. This is where approved scrolls appear and where scrips are generated and tracked.
5. Customs generates the scroll. Claims are processed on a first-in-first-out basis.
6. The exporter generates the e-scrip from the approved scroll in the ledger.

RoDTEP is not paid into a bank account. The benefit issues as a transferable e-scrip held in an electronic credit ledger maintained by CBIC. An e-scrip can be used to pay basic customs duty on your own imports, or transferred to another IEC holder registered on ICEGATE with an active e-scrip account — transfers are done on the portal and verified by OTP.

The two time limits that quietly destroy benefit

Both of these are worth putting in a calendar, because both expire silently.

• The claim window. A claim must be filed within one year from the shipping bill date or the date of scroll generation, whichever is later.
• The scrip’s own life. An e-scrip is valid for one year from the date it is generated on ICEGATE. An expired scrip cannot be revalidated or extended.

The second one catches exporters who generate scrips diligently and then hold them, waiting either for an import to use them against or for a better price from a buyer. A scrip held for thirteen months is worth nothing. If you are not going to use a scrip against your own imports inside the year, sell it inside the year.

What is outside the scheme

RoDTEP does not cover everything that leaves the country. Exports and supplies generally outside the scheme include re-export of imported goods; transhipment; goods in the restricted or prohibited export schedules; goods subject to a minimum export price or an export duty; deemed exports; supplies by a DTA unit into an SEZ or FTWZ; goods manufactured wholly or partly in a warehouse under Section 65 of the Customs Act; and exports made under Advance Authorisation, special Advance Authorisation or duty-free import authorisation where the applicable schedule does not provide for them.

The exclusion list has changed more than once since 2021, most notably for the AA, SEZ and EOU categories described above. Treat any list of exclusions — including this one — as correct on its date and confirm your own category against the current appendices before you build the benefit into a price.

What happened the last three times the deadline came round

RoDTEP’s rates have not been stable, and the pattern is more useful than any single rate. Two things stand out: the scheme has been continued every time, and more than once the notification arrived on or about the last day.

• 1 January 2021 — the scheme takes effect for all exporters of goods manufactured in India.
• 26 May 2025 — Notification 11/2025-26 restores RoDTEP for Advance Authorisation holders, SEZs and EOUs with effect from 1 June 2025. Notification 10/2025-26 the same day aligns the RoDTEP schedule to tariff changes.
• 30 September 2025 — Notification No. 35/2025, issued on the last day of the then current period, extends the scheme to 31 March 2026 for DTA units, Advance Authorisation holders, SEZ units and EOUs, with the existing rates continuing to apply.
• 23 February 2026 — Notification 60/2025-26, read with a corrigendum dated 24 February 2026, restricts the benefit to 50 per cent of the existing rates and, where applicable, 50 per cent of the notified value caps for products in Appendices 4R and 4RE, excluding ITC (HS) Chapters 1 to 24.
• 1 April 2026 — the full rates are restored.
• 31 March 2026 — Notification 74/2025-26 continues the rates and value caps of Appendices 4R and 4RE as they stood on 31 March 2026, for the period 1 April 2026 to 30 September 2026, with all other terms unchanged.

Two conclusions an exporter can actually use. First: no notification by 27 September does not mean no notification. The September 2025 continuation was issued on 30 September 2025 itself, and a notification landing on 30 September 2026 would be the scheme behaving exactly as it did a year ago. Second: continued is not the same as unchanged. That February episode is the reason not to assume a clean extension — a mid-year cut to half the notified rate has already happened once inside the last eight months. An extension at existing rates, an extension at revised rates, a partial restriction and a lapse are all consistent with how RoDTEP has actually been administered. Plan for the range, not for one outcome.

What to do this week

This section is written for the last week of September 2026 and will be rewritten when the status block above is updated.

Practical, in order, and none of it requires knowing what DGFT will do:

1. Check that RODTEPY is on every shipping bill you file this week. Exports made up to and including 30 September are governed by the current notification whatever happens on 1 October, and on last year’s timing the continuation may well be notified on the last day itself. A missed declaration on a shipment that qualifies is a pure loss either way.
2. Get your EGMs filed. Claims do not move without them.
3. Pull your ledger and look at scrip dates. Anything approaching twelve months from generation should be used or sold now, not after the policy news distracts everyone.
4. Do not rebuild your October pricing on an assumed rate. If a quotation for October shipment has RoDTEP netted into it, either flag it as subject to the notification or hold the benefit out of the price until the notification is issued. Quoting a benefit that has not been notified is a margin risk you are taking on yourself.
5. Separate your 4R and 4RE lines now, if you export under more than one category. If a revision comes, it may not treat them identically — the February restriction did not apply uniformly, and Chapters 1 to 24 were carved out of it.

Where RoDTEP sits against your other export costs

RoDTEP is a recovery against costs you have already borne, so it belongs on the same sheet as your freight and clearance costs rather than in a separate incentive column. If you are building a landed cost from scratch, the other components are set out on freight forwarder charges, and the mode-side costs on ocean freight and air freight. For volumetric conversions on an air quotation, there is a CBM calculator.

Scapex is a freight forwarder and customs broker based in Ahmedabad. We file shipping bills and prepare export documentation, which is where the RODTEPY declaration is either made or missed. We are not tax consultants and this page is not tax or legal advice: your rate, your cap and your eligibility depend on your own HS codes and export category, and on the notification in force on the date of your shipping bill. Confirm them against the appendices and against your own consultant before you price on them. If you want the documentation side checked before filing, get in touch.

Where to check the official position

• DGFT notifications — the notification that governs your shipping bill date, and the current Appendix 4R and 4RE.
• ICEGATE — the RoDTEP credit ledger, scroll status and e-scrip generation and transfer.
• CBIC — the customs side, including the electronic credit ledger the scrips sit in.