India Extends Export Relief Scheme for Gulf Shipments to March 2027

For exporters sending cereals, spices, fruits and other agri-commodities to the Gulf, the cost of getting a container from an Indian port to Jebel Ali, Jeddah or Hamad Port has not been just about freight rates this year. War-risk surcharges, rerouted sailings and costlier marine insurance have all been part of the landed-cost math since fighting in the region began disrupting shipping lanes through the Strait of Hormuz and the wider Gulf corridor. On 30 September 2026, the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) extended one of the government's main responses to that disruption, giving exporters more time to use it.

The scheme is called RELIEF — Resilience & Logistics Intervention for Export Facilitation — and it sits under the Ministry of Commerce & Industry's Export Promotion Mission. It was first notified on 19 March 2026 (Notification No. 65/2025-26) as a time-bound mechanism to help exporters absorb the extra cost of shipping to the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Iraq, Iran, Israel and Yemen while those routes stayed volatile. The scheme has three components, run through the Export Credit Guarantee Corporation of India (ECGC): cover for shipments already insured with ECGC, a forward-looking insurance cover for new shipments, and a direct cost-reimbursement component aimed specifically at non-insured MSME exporters. That third component lets an eligible MSME claim up to 50% of documented extra freight and insurance costs on CIF contracts, or up to 50% of the drop in realised proceeds caused by war-risk and conflict-related surcharges on FOB contracts, capped at ₹50 lakh per exporter. Combined, the three components carry an approved outlay of roughly ₹497 crore.

What Changed on 30 September 2026

DGFT Notification No. 37/2026-27 amends the scheme's Component II eligibility criteria — the forward-looking insurance cover for shipments by bill of lading or airway bill date — extending its validity to 31 March 2027. This follows an earlier extension (Notification No. 21/2026-27, dated 29 June 2026) that had pushed the deadline to 30 September 2026. The notification's stated purpose is to keep utilisation up and continue supporting exporters as the West Asia disruption persists, rather than let the support lapse while the underlying shipping risk is still live. The other components and conditions of the original notification remain unchanged.

For agri-exporters, the practical significance is less about any single rupee figure and more about predictability. A six-month or even three-month support window is hard to plan a shipment programme around when buyers are negotiating contracts for delivery well into 2027. Extending Component II's eligibility to the end of the next fiscal year gives exporters shipping to Gulf buyers a clearer basis for pricing in freight-risk cover, rather than having to guess whether the scheme will still apply by the time a shipment actually sails.

Business takeaway: for exporters whose order books lean toward the Gulf, this is a scheme worth actually using rather than filing away as background policy news — particularly MSME exporters without their own ECGC cover, who are the ones component three is built for. SATA GreenX ships several categories into exactly these markets, including Basmati Rice, Turmeric Powder and Fresh Dragon Fruit, so a scheme that softens the cost of continued Gulf disruption is directly relevant to how those shipments get priced and insured over the coming months. Before relying on any figure here for a live claim, exporters should confirm current terms directly with ECGC or DGFT, since the EPM Steering Committee retains the authority to modify, taper or withdraw any component as conditions change.