Agro MSP + MEP Procurement Tracker

MEP (Minimum Export Price) is a floor price notified by the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) under Section 5 of the Foreign Trade (Development and Regulation) Act 1992, expressed as US dollars per metric tonne, below which the specified commodity cannot be exported from India. MEP is a trade-policy lever — the Government of India imposes it when domestic prices spike (to discourage exports and keep domestic supply available), and withdraws it when domestic prices soften. In the last two years alone the DGFT has actively wielded MEP on basmati rice (USD 1,200 per MT notified September 2023, revised down to USD 950 per MT in October 2023, MEP withdrawn September 2024), imposed an outright ban on non-basmati white rice exports (20 July 2023, still largely in force with case-by-case G2G exceptions), imposed a 20 per cent export duty on parboiled rice (August 2023, since eased), imposed and withdrawn MEP on onion multiple times through the 2023 domestic price cycle, and used export bans and floor prices on wheat since May 2022. MSP (Minimum Support Price) is a different beast entirely — it is a floor procurement price notified by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs on the recommendation of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP), under the aegis of the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, at which state procurement agencies (Food Corporation of India, state civil supplies corporations, NAFED, cotton corporations, jute corporations) purchase specified crops from farmers to protect them from distress sales. MSP is announced twice a year for 22 mandated crops covering the kharif (June-Oct sown, Nov-March marketed) and rabi (Oct-Nov sown, April-June marketed) seasons. An Indian agri-processing company reconciling its books needs both flags in the same ledger because it is on both sides of the transaction — buying from farmers at or above MSP (statutory floor on the procurement leg), and selling to overseas buyers at or above MEP where a MEP is in force (statutory floor on the export leg). A single mis-classified shipment or a single mis-priced procurement lot triggers regulatory exposure at DGFT / Customs / EIC / MPEDA / APEDA on the export side, or grievance-redressal exposure at the state Agriculture Marketing Board and Krishi Upaj Mandi Samiti on the procurement side.

The DGFT Basmati MEP timeline is a textbook example of why per-shipment date-of-booking capture matters more than a season-average price. In August 2023, faced with domestic wholesale basmati prices in Punjab and Haryana surging above Rs 5,500 per quintal (against a farm-gate MSP-equivalent expectation closer to Rs 3,800-4,200 per quintal for cane paddy varieties), the Ministry of Commerce and Industry via the DGFT notified a Minimum Export Price of USD 1,200 per metric tonne for basmati rice under Notification No. 20/2023 dated 27 August 2023, effective immediately. Exporters at the ports — Kandla, Mundra, Kolkata, JNPT, Cochin — with contracts booked at lower FOB prices found their shipping-bill declarations rejected at the customs interface. The USD 1,200 threshold was widely criticised by the export trade as commercially unviable — traditional basmati (Pusa 1121, Pusa 1509, 1401, Traditional Basmati) at high-end premium is close to USD 1,000-1,100 per MT FOB, but medium-quality volumes and long-tail contracts run at USD 700-900 per MT. Following industry representation from AIREA (All India Rice Exporters Association), the DGFT notified a revised MEP of USD 950 per MT under Notification No. 32/2023-24 dated 25 October 2023. This lower floor remained in force until the DGFT withdrew the MEP entirely under Notification No. 24/2024-25 dated 14 September 2024, restoring pre-August-2023 free-export status for basmati. The compliance implication for any exporter with contract booking dates spread across August 2023 to September 2024 is that the applicable MEP for shipping-bill declaration is the notification in force on the date of the shipping bill, not the date of the underlying export contract with the buyer. A contract booked at USD 900 per MT in July 2023 (pre-MEP) that shipped in September 2023 was subject to the USD 1,200 MEP and could not be shipped without contract renegotiation. A contract booked in September 2023 that shipped in November 2023 was subject to the USD 950 MEP. A contract booked in July 2024 that shipped in October 2024 was subject to no MEP at all. The tool captures this by asking for the booking or shipping date per row, letting the user enter the reference MEP applicable to that date, and flagging the row NON-COMPLIANT if the row's rate is below the reference. The illustrative notification-history reference table on this page lists the three basmati notification events and the corresponding non-basmati and parboiled rice actions for cross-reference. Verify the current-day DGFT notification via the DGFT Notifications repository at dgft.gov.in before running actual shipping bills.

The e-BRC (electronic Bank Realisation Certificate) is the digital certificate issued by an Authorised Dealer Category-I bank on receipt of the full or part export proceeds in convertible foreign exchange against a specific shipping bill. e-BRCs are pushed by the AD bank into the DGFT portal, from where they are consumed by RoDTEP scrip issuance, drawback claims, GST refund under Rule 89(5) on zero-rated supplies, and any DGFT scheme entitlement dependent on realisation of proceeds. The FEMA compliance timeline layers three checkpoints. First, the RBI Master Direction on Exports of Goods and Services (Master Direction No. 16/2015-16, as amended) sets the outer hard deadline for full realisation and repatriation of export proceeds at 9 months (270 days) from the date of export for merchandise exporters — this was extended from 6 months to 9 months by RBI circular dated 1 April 2023, and the extension remains in force. A shipment booked on 15 January 2026 must have full proceeds realised and remitted by 15 October 2026, failing which the AD bank raises a XOS (overdue export bill) alert and the exporter must approach RBI for extension under FEMA Regulation 9. Second, most AD banks operationalise a 60-day operational checkpoint — after which the outstanding export bill is flagged in the AD bank's monthly overdue-review meeting and the exporter is expected to file a Form ENC (Export Non-Compliance) with the bank. Third, the 180-day checkpoint is the pre-2023 statutory outer limit and remains a de-facto risk marker for many AD banks and for internal risk-committee reporting at large exporters. The tool captures all three checkpoints — days-from-booking, 60-day operational flag (green / amber / red), 180-day risk marker, and the 270-day FEMA hard deadline — so that the exporter's treasury and trade-finance team have a single-view export-bill ageing at the shipping-bill level. Beyond the FEMA compliance angle, the same realisation date drives RoDTEP scrip issuance (which is only released against the e-BRC), drives GST refund eligibility under Section 54(3) with Rule 89(5) on zero-rated supplies (refund cannot be claimed for shipments without a corresponding e-BRC), and drives fx-variance accounting under Ind AS 21 (any USD-INR movement between the shipping-bill date and the realisation date is booked to fx-variance in the P&L, and the reconciliation to the specific shipping-bill invoice is the standard month-end close matter for every Indian agri exporter).

Appendix 4R of the Handbook of Procedures under the Foreign Trade Policy 2023 is the master rate schedule of the Remission of Duties and Taxes on Exported Products (RoDTEP) scheme, notified by the Department of Commerce via the DGFT. RoDTEP replaced the erstwhile MEIS (Merchandise Exports from India Scheme) with effect from 1 January 2021, and is designed to remit the embedded central, state and local duties and taxes that are not otherwise refunded through the GST or drawback route — VAT on fuel used in transportation, mandi tax, stamp duty, electricity duty embedded in power tariff, duty on farm-diesel embedded in cost of production, and so on. The scheme grants RoDTEP scrips (electronic transferable Duty Credit Scrips) as a percentage of the FOB value declared on the shipping bill, at a rate specified per 8-digit HSN code in Appendix 4R. Illustrative RoDTEP rates for agri-processing exports include basmati rice under HSN 1006 30 10 at approximately 0.7 per cent of FOB, non-basmati parboiled rice under HSN 1006 30 90 at similar levels, frozen shrimp under HSN 0306 at approximately 2.5 per cent of FOB, frozen chicken cuts under HSN 0207 at approximately 2.0 per cent of FOB, and onion under HSN 0703 at approximately 2.0 per cent of FOB. Rates are periodically revised — the last major revision was in the September 2024 Handbook amendment, and further revisions are due as the WTO subsidy-review discussions progress. The tool computes RoDTEP claimable as FOB in INR times the Appendix 4R rate per commodity — the user can overwrite the pre-loaded illustrative rate if the current-notification rate is different for the specific 8-digit HSN. Two important operational nuances: first, RoDTEP is not cumulable with Duty Drawback (DBK) on the same shipment — the exporter must elect one or the other at the shipping-bill declaration stage — so any RoDTEP-claimable computation shown by the tool assumes the exporter has elected RoDTEP over DBK. Second, RoDTEP scrip issuance is conditional on the e-BRC being loaded to the DGFT portal by the AD bank — so the RoDTEP realisation timeline runs in parallel to the e-BRC realisation timeline, and both need to be reconciled at the shipping-bill level in the exporter's books.

The Registration-cum-Membership Certificate (RCMC) regime under the Foreign Trade Policy 2023 requires every merchandise exporter of a scheduled commodity to hold an RCMC from the designated Export Promotion Council or statutory body covering that commodity. For agri-processing exports the two dominant bodies are APEDA (Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority, constituted under the APEDA Act 1985 in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry) and MPEDA (Marine Products Export Development Authority, constituted under the MPEDA Act 1972 in the same Ministry). APEDA covers basmati and non-basmati rice, wheat, wheat products, dairy products, poultry meat and poultry products, honey, fresh fruits and vegetables including onion, floriculture, herbal and medicinal plants, processed food products, groundnut, cocoa and chocolate. MPEDA covers all marine and aquaculture products — frozen shrimp (vannamei and black tiger), frozen finfish, cephalopods, molluscs, live seafood, dried fish, seafood value-added products. An exporter of vannamei shrimp holds an MPEDA RCMC, files monthly export data returns with MPEDA, has each shipment lot inspected by the Export Inspection Council (EIC) via the Export Inspection Agency network for antibiotic-residue lab-testing (chloramphenicol, nitrofurans, tetracycline metabolites) and pathogen testing before an EIC Health Certificate is issued per lot, and holds the underlying Aquaculture Authorisation Scheme registration for the farm plus a Broodstock Multiplication Centre certification for the hatchery. An exporter of basmati rice holds an APEDA RCMC, complies with the Basmati Export Development Foundation (BEDF) protocols for varietal purity, and complies with EU-specific pesticide residue limits (tricyclazole, buprofezin) where the shipment is EU-bound. The tool flags APEDA or MPEDA RCMC requirement per commodity per row, plus a callout when the commodity requires per-lot EIC pre-shipment inspection (which is universal for MPEDA-covered marine products and increasingly common for APEDA-covered products bound for EU, US, Japan and Middle East markets). The FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India) registration is a separate parallel requirement for domestic-market food processors, and is not covered on this export-focused tracker — verify the FSSAI position for your specific product category with your compliance team.