What are the challenges in ensuring last-mile efficiency of digital trade facilitation platforms like eCoO 2.0?

DGFT's eCoO 2.0 platform, with electronic filing of Non-Preferential Certificates of Origin made mandatory from 1 January 2025 [1], marks a shift from discretionary counters to rule-based trade facilitation. Yet last-mile efficiency — the actual turnaround at the exporter's desk — remains constrained by institutional, capacity and cross-border gaps.

Fragmentation at the issuing end

• eCoO 2.0 operates through a dispersed network of issuing agencies and chambers of commerce [1]; enforcing uniform service standards and timelines across hundreds of issuing officers is difficult.
• Digital filing removes paperwork, not discretion in document verification, so processing time still varies by agency.

Capacity gap at the exporter end

• Features such as Aadhaar-based e-signing, digital signature tokens and multi-user IEC mapping [1] presume digital literacy.
• MSME and first-time exporters in smaller towns rely on intermediaries, re-introducing the very transaction cost the reform sought to remove.

Data quality and interoperability

• Automation is only as good as the underlying database. Status Holder Certificates, now auto-issued from DGCIS merchandise data, exclude services and deemed exports in disaggregated form, forcing exporters to apply separately for upgradation [2] — a data gap that breaks straight-through processing.
• Platform silos between DGFT, CBIC customs systems and sectoral regulators (FSSAI, CDSCO) prevent single-entry data reuse.

Non-standard cases and redress

• Back-to-back CoO for re-export and merchanting trade rests on documentary evidence from the foreign country of origin [1]; such exceptions need human adjudication, and thin grievance redress converts them into delays.

External acceptance

• A digital certificate's worth depends on the importing country's authority accepting it electronically; absent mutual electronic exchange, exporters still carry paper copies.

Last-mile efficiency is therefore an ecosystem problem, not merely a software one. Sustained exporter handholding, deeper integration with the National Single Window System, cleaner disaggregated trade data, and negotiated electronic origin-data exchange under FTAs — consistent with the Department of Commerce's continuing trade-facilitation agenda [3] — can convert digitisation into measurable Ease of Doing Business for every exporter, not only the largest.