If you export from India, the rules that move your margin rarely arrive as news. They come out as a DGFT notification, an RBI circular addressed to banks, a CBIC notification or a Gazette entry, often late in the evening, and on sites that weren't built for skimming. This is the routine I use to keep up, plus a free tool I built to make it lighter.
1. Know which publisher owns which risk
Start by mapping what you care about to who publishes it.
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DGFT covers export and import policy, licences, export incentives and restricted items. It publishes three kinds of documents, and they mean different things:
- Notifications amend the Foreign Trade Policy or the ITC(HS) import and export schedules. When an item moves from "free" to "restricted", this is usually where it shows up.
- Public notices amend the Handbook of Procedures and its appendices: procedures, forms and documentation.
- Trade notices are clarifications, advisories and process updates. They are often operational, but they are not always minor.
- RBI covers foreign-exchange rules (FEMA), export proceeds, banking and credit. For exporters the key series is the A.P. (DIR Series) circulars. They are addressed to Authorised Dealer banks, which means your bank will apply them to you whether or not you have read them.
- CBIC / GST covers GST rates, refunds, filing changes and portal notices.
- The Gazette of India is where notifications are formally published. If someone tells you "the amendment is in force", the Gazette entry is what to check.
- SEBI and PIB matter less for day-to-day exporting. PIB is still useful as an early, plain-English heads-up that a ministry has decided something.
2. Read the instrument, not the headline
Headlines tell you very little. "Amendment in import policy of raw sugar classified under Exim Code 170114..." tells you the item and the direction, but not the effective date, any exceptions or any transition period. Before you change a price, a shipment or a filing, open the PDF and check three things:
- Effective date. Is it immediate, from a future date, or retrospective?
- Scope. Which HS codes, which ports, which class of exporter?
- Transition. Are shipments already in the pipeline protected, for example those with a letter of credit opened before the date?
If you can't answer all three from the document, ask your CA or customs broker. Don't guess.
3. Batch it once a day
Checking six sites ad hoc means you either miss things or check too often. A better pattern:
- One fixed slot a day, for example 9 a.m., to scan everything published since yesterday.
- Filter by your exposure. Look up your HS chapters and your instruments (incentive schemes, advance authorisation, and so on). Skip everything else.
- Log what you acted on. Note the date, the notice number, what changed and what you did.
4. Use RSS where it exists
RBI and SEBI publish RSS feeds, and PIB has a press-release RSS. Any feed reader can pull them into one place. DGFT, CBIC and the Gazette are harder because their pages aren't built for feeds, which is exactly where people fall behind.
5. The tool I built for this: PolicyPulse
I got tired of doing step 4 by hand, so I built PolicyPulse. It's a static site. A daily GitHub Actions job fetches the public pages of PIB, RBI, SEBI, the CBIC GST portal, DGFT and the Gazette, and stores each notice with its date and official link. It then files each notice on sector pages: exports, agri, MSME, banking, GST, pharma and startups. The archive has 654 notices, including a 2023-26 backfill labelled with each document's own date, and there's an RSS feed.
What I deliberately didn't do:
- It doesn't summarise the law for you. Each card shows the official headline and source type, and tells you to open the source. An impact note appears only where the notice itself states one. Lines about amendments, restrictions or duties appear only when those words are in the official text. Any optional AI note is dropped if it contains a number that isn't in the source.
- Sector filing is keyword matching, so it will sometimes mis-file a notice. A company with "Exports" in its name can land on the exports page, for example. Treat the sector pages as a first filter, not a verdict.
- Sources can fail. The sources page shows the result of the last fetch for each publisher, so you can see when one didn't come through and check that site directly.
The daily feed, the sector pages and the RSS feed are free. Pro is a convenience rather than extra data: $9 once, via PayPal, for a link to the unlisted weekly Pro brief page, updated every Monday; no renewal, no account. It sorts that week's notices by sector with official links, and it funds the project.
A ten-minute daily routine
- Open your sector page (or your RSS reader) at a fixed time.
- Open the official PDF for anything that touches your HS codes, your bank or your GST filing.
- Check the effective date, the scope and the transition.
- Log it, and loop in your CA or broker if it changes anything you do.
Disclaimer: This article and PolicyPulse are for education and information only. They are not legal, tax or investment advice, and PolicyPulse is not a government website. Always read the official notice and consult a qualified professional before acting.
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