Chapter 19 - Indian Trade Service (ITS) | A Bouquet of Services by IPS Lohit Matani and IPS Vishal - UPSC PDF Download

Indian Trade Service (ITS)

Contributor: Mr. Anupam Kumar, ITS 2013 and Mr. Dabhole Dileeraj Chandrakant, ITS 2014

19.1 Cadre Structure and Overview

ITS officers are responsible for working for the progress of the country. They are proactive in their actions, quick in their decisions, innovative in their efforts, and responsive in their dispensations for the growth of the trade and export of the country. Their work also benefits the lowest section in the socio-economic pyramid.

19.2 Roles and Responsibilities

ITS officers have the following work in different offices:

I.    In Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT):

DGFT is the official regulator of foreign trade in India. ITS officers perform the following tasks in this organization:

1. Officers posted in this directorate are responsible for advising the foreign trade policy and administering its implementation. They are not only responsible for facilitating the growth of India’s external trade in goods and services, but also have the duty of providing critical inputs regarding the growth of India’s manufacturing and services sectors.
2. They are responsible for regulations under Foreign Trade (Development and Regulation) Act, 1992 (FTDR Act). They handle the enforcement and adjudication under this act in matters of violations under FTDR act, foreign trade related violations like frauds, and violation of export obligations under various export promotion schemes.
3. Officers in this office also handle quality related and other trade disputes between the Indian and foreign firms.
4. They administer various export promotion measures and export incentive schemes.
5. They allocate export quotas and tariff rate quotas to various sectors of goods and services.
6. They provide licenses for various import and export commodities and also regulate their exports and imports.
7. They administer agreements like Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) (preferential tariff system which provides for a formal system of exemption from the more general rules of the World Trade Organization) and other Certificate of Origin related matters.
8. They monitor import of sensitive items.

II.  In Trade Policy Division:

The officers of the Indian Trade Service hold some of the key positions in the Trade Policy Division of the Department of Commerce which deals with the multilateral trade negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO). ITS officers negotiate in areas like Non-Agricultural Market Access (NAMA); trade remedy measures like anti-dumping, countervailing and safeguard; settlement of international trade disputes; information technology agreement (ITA); rules of origin; Globalised System of Trade Preferences (GSTP) and government procurement.

Their work entails the following things:

1. They formulate and finalize India’s negotiating position.
2. They conduct stakeholder consultation on international trade related issues.
3. They extract trade related data and analyze them.
4. They prepare India’s tariff schedule.
5. They conduct important negotiations during the meetings of WTO and also make policy papers and cabinet notes for these negotiations.
6. They prepare replies to parliamentary questions regarding WTO negotiations.

III. In Permanent Mission to WTO:

ITS officers are posted in the Permanent Mission of India to the WTO at Geneva. The work handled by the officers in the Mission are related to agriculture, NAMA, ITA, government procurement, GSTP, sanitary and Phytosanitary measures (SPS), technical barriers to trade (TBT), import licensing. Some of the other WTO bodies that the officers have handled are the Committee on Market Access (CMA) and the Council for Trade in Goods (CTG).

Further they do the following work in the missions:

1. They  negotiate on international trade issues in the multilateral, plurilateral/ small group and bilateral formats
2. They work through coalitions in the key areas of agriculture and NAMA.
3. They formulate India’s position on trade issues and negotiate on that basis in the WTO meetings.
4. They make submissions to the WTO both from India’s and coalition’s (a coalition is a group of countries negotiating together on an international issue e.g. BRICS) perspective.
5. They negotiate, prepare and put forward Indian tariff schedule in the WTO.

ITS officers have been chairpersons of some of the key WTO bodies like Committee on Market Access (CMA).

IV. In Special Economic Zones (SEZs):

ITS officers occupy the position of Development Commissioner in SEZs. Under this capacity they are responsible for supervising the operation of the zone under them, including giving approval to units within the zone and liaising with the respective State and Central Government agencies for successful operation of the Zones.

The key objectives of their work are:

1. To make SEZs as hubs for economic activities related to foreign trade.
2. To generate additional economic activities and promote exports of goods and services in SEZs.
3. To promote investment from domestic and foreign sources.
4. To create employment opportunities along with the development of infrastructural facilities in SEZs.

V.  In Directorate General of Anti-Dumping and Allied Duties (DGAD)

ITS officers perform the following tasks in DGAD:

1. They implement WTO Agreement on Antidumping (ADA), Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (ASCM) and the corresponding municipal laws (domestic laws).
2. They conduct anti-dumping and anti-subsidy/ countervailing investigations and make recommendations to the Central Government for imposition of anti-dumping or countervailing measures, where appropriate, to protect the domestic industry from unfair trade practices of the trading partners in the form of dumping and subsidization.
3. They provide technical advice to the Department of Commerce in the matters of WTO Rules negotiations, bilateral and multilateral trade negotiations and trade disputes with other Member countries.

VI. In Department of Commerce:

ITS officers perform the following roles in this department:

1. In this department, ITS officers help in formulation of appropriate policies on India’s external trade, and administer their implementation for its development, promotion and regulation.
2. They facilitate creation of an enabling environment and infrastructure for accelerated growth of India’s trade in goods and services.
3. They take part in negotiations of external trade agreements at multilateral, regional and bilateral level.
4. They perform a key role of interacting and maintaining liaison with international agencies such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the United Nations Conference on Trade & Development (UNCTAD), the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), as well as individual countries or group of countries on a wide range of issues including tariff and non-tariff barriers, international commodity agreements, preferential/ free trade arrangements, and investment matters, etc.
5. They decide terms for the Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreements (CECA), and so on.
6. They intervene in trade disputes with individual countries.
7. They implement the Assistance to States for Development of Export Infrastructure and Allied Activities (ASIDE) scheme.
8. They supervise and regulate the State Trading Enterprises.

19.3 Normal Growth Profile

We will be discussing about the various career opportunities an ITS Officer has in a separate topic. However, this topic only deals with various ranks an ITS Officer holds during his professional life. These ranks are held when he/ she is working in his/ her main line department.