National Committee On Trade Facilitation

India constituted an NCTF with the Cabinet Secretary of India as the Chair.
NCTF has played an important role in reducing the high cost of imports and exports so as to integrate our cross-border trade with the global value chain.

Some of the landmarks being-

- Establishment of a National Single Window system to route all import related formalities viz., examination, sampling, clearance, etc., which involves a plethora of agencies, through a single online national portal;
- simplification of fees and charges for various clearance related activities at the borders;
- Paperless filing of import/ export documents through the ‘E-sanchit’ project; and
- Publishing of resource information viz., procedures for import/ export, laws and regulations, etc., online for ease of access.
- Consistent trade facilitation efforts have resulted in substantive improvement of India’s performance in Trading Across Borders indicator from 146 in 2017 to 80 in the year 2018. Further, these initiatives have also contributed to an overall improvement in ‘Ease of Doing Business’ environment in the country, as also recognized by the World Bank.