Every exporter eventually hits the same wall: the product is competitive, the buyer is ready, and the margin still doesn’t quite work once fuel taxes, mandi cess, and interest on the working capital loan that funded the shipment are added in. What most exporters don’t realise is that several government schemes for exporters exist specifically to hand that cost back, and most businesses only ever end up using one or two of them.
None of these schemes is secret, but nobody hands you a checklist when your IEC comes through. This guide walks through the government schemes for exporters actually worth knowing in 2026, what each one gives back, and the overlap rule that decides whether you can stack them.
RoDTEP: The Government Scheme for Exporters Almost Everyone Should Claim
RoDTEP (Remission of Duties and Taxes on Exported Products) is the single most widely used government scheme for exporters in India, and it refunds the embedded central, state, and local taxes baked into an export product’s cost that no other scheme touches, things like fuel excise, mandi tax, coal cess, electricity duty, and stamp duty on export documentation. It replaced the MEIS scheme in 2021 after MEIS was found to violate WTO rules, and it comes back as transferable e-scrips credited to an exporter’s electronic ledger on ICEGATE. Under DGFT Notification No. 74/2025-26 dated 31 March 2026, RoDTEP has been extended through 30 September 2026 for Domestic Tariff Area units, Advance Authorisation holders, EOUs, and SEZ units, at the rates already in force. The rule that trips people up: you must declare your intent to claim RoDTEP directly on the shipping bill at the time of export. Miss that box, and the benefit is gone permanently, with no retrospective fix.
Duty Drawback and Advance Authorisation: Recovering Input Costs
Two more government schemes for exporters work on the raw-material side rather than the finished product. Duty Drawback refunds the customs duty already paid on imported inputs used to manufacture an export product, and because it refunds a different cost than RoDTEP, both can be claimed on the same shipping bill. Advance Authorisation goes further and lets an exporter import those inputs, plus the fuel, oil, and packaging consumed in production, without paying duty in the first place, provided the finished goods are exported within a set period, and input quantities stay within DGFT’s defined wastage norms for that product.
EPCG: Cheaper Machinery, With a Catch
The Export Promotion Capital Goods scheme, one of the older government schemes for exporters investing in new machinery, lets exporters import equipment at zero customs duty, which matters most for manufacturers upgrading capacity. The catch is the export obligation: the business must export goods worth six times the duty saved, generally within six years of the EPCG authorisation being issued. Fall short, and DGFT can recover the duty along with interest. There’s some breathing room right now, too: a March 2026 public notice pushed the obligation deadline out to 31 August 2026 for authorisations that were due to expire between March and May 2026.
RoSCTL: The Textile-Specific Version
Apparel, garments, and made-ups don’t claim RoDTEP; they run on their own version of these government schemes for exporters called RoSCTL, which rebates state and central taxes specific to the textile value chain through the same e-scrip mechanism. The two schemes are mutually exclusive for the same shipment, so garment exporters need to check which one their product actually falls under before filing, not after.
Cheaper Credit: The New Interest Subvention Scheme
Exporters have long complained that Indian export credit costs more than what competitors in China, Vietnam, or Thailand pay. In January 2026, the newest of the government schemes for exporters launched: an interest subvention scheme under the six-year Export Promotion Mission, replacing the older Interest Equalisation Scheme. Eligible MSME manufacturer exporters now get a 2.75% interest subvention on pre- and post-shipment rupee export credit, capped at Rs 50 lakh per exporter per year and covering roughly 75% of six-digit tariff lines. The Export Promotion Mission itself carries a Rs 25,060 crore outlay through FY31, folding several fragmented schemes into one outcome-linked framework instead of the extend-every-six-months pattern RoDTEP and its predecessors have followed for years.
NIRVIK: Insurance for the Payment That Never Comes
The last of these government schemes for exporters covers what happens when a buyer defaults. ECGC’s NIRVIK scheme ensures banks against losses on export credit, covering up to 90% of both principal and interest, well above the 60% cover available under standard ECGC policies. That higher cover is what convinces banks to lend to exporters, particularly MSMEs and the gems and jewellery sector, at more competitive rates, since most of the bank’s downside risk sits with the insurance instead.
The Overlap Rule Nobody Explains About These Government Schemes for Exporters
This is where most exporters lose money without realising it. These schemes aren’t all stackable: RoSCTL and RoDTEP can’t both apply to the same shipment, and a missing shipping bill declaration forfeits RoDTEP with no way to reclaim it later. Getting the combination right, EPCG for machinery, Advance Authorisation for inputs, RoDTEP for the finished product, is usually what separates an exporter earning a genuinely competitive margin from one leaving five to ten per cent of it on the table simply because nobody checked which boxes to tick.
Conclusion
None of these government schemes for exporters requires an army of consultants to access. DGFT’s portal handles all of them, but they do require knowing they exist before the shipping bill is filed, not after. Keep an IEC, an ICEGATE login, and a clear read on which schemes actually apply to your product, and the machinery the government has built for exporters over the last five years starts working quietly in the background instead of sitting unclaimed.
