The Directorate General of Foreign Trade has introduced an Open API for issuing and verifying Certificates of Origin through the Trade Connect e-Platform. Eligible exporters can now connect their ERP, accounting or other business software directly with the government’s Certificate of Origin system instead of repeatedly entering the same data on a separate portal.
A Certificate of Origin identifies where a product originates and is central to claiming tariff preferences under trade agreements. The DGFT facility covers preferential as well as non-preferential certificates and applies agreement-specific rules and fields. The government listed arrangements including India’s CEPAs, FTAs, ECTA, EFTA TEPA and other preferential schemes among those handled by the system.
The technical design also has governance relevance. According to DGFT, requests and responses use SHA-256 RSA digital signatures with 2048-bit X.509 certificates; access includes IP whitelisting; and application status can be tracked through a transaction ledger. That makes the initiative an example of digitisation moving beyond a website interface toward machine-to-machine government services.