Niryat Protsahan explained: how MSME exporters claim the 2.75% interest subvention
The Interest Equalisation Scheme ended in 2024. Here is the Niryat Protsahan interest subvention that succeeded it — 2.75% for MSME exporters.
- Niryat Protsahan
- Export Promotion Mission
- Trade Finance
If your finance team is still budgeting around the Interest Equalisation Scheme (IES), that scheme ended on 31 December 2024. Its successor is the interest subvention component under Niryat Protsahan — a sub-scheme of the government's Export Promotion Mission (EPM) — live since early 2026, and it changes both the number and the mechanics of how export credit gets cheaper for MSME exporters.
What Niryat Protsahan actually is
Per the Department of Commerce, the Export Promotion Mission is implemented through two integrated sub-schemes: Niryat Protsahan, covering financial support, and Niryat Disha, covering non-financial support like market development. Niryat Protsahan itself bundles more than one instrument: an interest subvention on export credit, and separately, collateral support that helps MSME exporters access bank credit with limited collateral or third-party guarantees. This post covers the interest subvention — eligible MSME exporters using rupee export credit should evaluate whether they qualify.
The interest subvention, in numbers
- Rate: 2.75% per annum, reducing the effective interest rate charged by your bank.
- Applies to: pre-shipment and post-shipment rupee export credit.
- Cap: ₹50 lakh per financial year, per eligible MSME exporter.
- Who qualifies: MSME exporters — the flagship benefit is scoped to this segment, not exporters generally.
This is a genuinely different mechanic from the old IES, which computed the subvention off RBI reference rates in a formula that varied by product category and bank. The currently notified rate under Niryat Protsahan is a flat 2.75% per annum — set by DGFT trade notice and subject to revision only through further notices, not a floating calculation your finance team has to re-derive every quarter. As with any notified scheme, treat the rate as current-as-of-notification rather than permanent, and confirm it against the latest DGFT trade notice before relying on it.
How the claim actually works
Unlike RoDTEP or Duty Drawback, this benefit does not flow through the Shipping Bill. It flows through your bank, gated by a DGFT-issued identifier — a Unique Identification Number (UIN) that anchors the claim.
At a high level, the shape of the process is: register with DGFT to obtain the UIN, associate it with the participating lending institution disbursing your export credit, and have the bank apply the reduced rate and report the claim against that UIN for reimbursement. The exact procedural detail — how the UIN is requested, precisely when it is issued, and how bank-detail changes are handled — is governed by DGFT's operational guidelines and amended by trade notice from time to time. Guidelines do provide for updating a UIN's bank mapping when your lending relationship changes; confirm the current procedure directly with DGFT or your bank rather than relying on any single summary, this one included.
From the exporter's side, the practical takeaway is straightforward even where the fine print isn't: timely UIN registration and keeping it correctly linked to the bank actually disbursing your credit are what determine whether the subvention is applied at all. Administrative errors, delayed registration, or incorrect bank mapping can delay or prevent an otherwise eligible benefit.
Where this actually saves money
On ₹2 crore of rupee export credit outstanding through a financial year, a 2.75% subvention is worth roughly ₹5.5 lakh in reduced interest — well within the ₹50 lakh annual cap for all but the largest MSME borrowers. For a working-capital-intensive exporter running pre-shipment credit continuously, that is real, recurring cash-flow relief — not a one-time rebate like RoDTEP or Drawback, but a standing discount on the cost of financing every shipment.
Where automation earns its keep
The pattern here is the same one that costs exporters money on RoDTEP and Duty Drawback: a benefit that exists and is fully legitimate, but where administrative errors, delayed registration, or incorrect bank mapping can delay or prevent it. A platform that tracks your UIN against the correct bank relationship, flags when a change in lending bank needs the mapping updated, and keeps the ₹50 lakh annual utilisation visible alongside your other incentive claims turns a financing benefit exporters routinely miss into one that shows up on the P&L every year, not just the year someone happened to read the DGFT trade notice.