The office of joint director-general of foreign trade in Patna. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Patna, Dec. 24: Bihar’s growth rate of more than 10 per cent is still not bringing enough work for the employees working at the office of joint director-general of foreign trade at Patna.

The regional office of director-general of foreign trade (DGFT) is just confined to issuing licences to applicants interested in carrying out import and export-related activities.

The main objective of the regional office, with its headquarters at Patna, is to dealwith traders of both Jharkhand and Bihar.

“Normally, we receive around 300 applications per annum from prospective exporters or importers for getting certificates and licences for the purpose. “The regional office just takes a one-time deposit of Rs 250 as token money for issuing the certificates,” said an officer at the regional office in Patna.

The office was set up in 1979 with a view to provide people with all the benefits and facilities at the local level to carry out the activities related to export and import.

The officer pointed out that there are various types of licences, like value-based licence, quantity-based licence and product category-wise licence.

Asked who are the big players in terms of corporate entity, the officer said: “There are not big corporate players both in t erms of brand entity or in terms of volume of trade. Basically, people from Patna and neighbouring districts come to the office for getting licences to carry out their business.”

On being asked as to what the criteria is to obtain the licence, the officer said any company which has a registered office or its branch in Bihar or Jharkhand or an individual whose firms have their headquarters or branch in the two states can apply for licence for export and import business.

“Before the partition of the state in 2000, the situation in terms of registration was better. After the division, most of the companies changed their headquarters to the neighbouring state,” he said, adding that things became worse for the regional office after everything was made online, giving firms and companies liberty to do their export and import work from anywhere in the country.

“We don’t keep records as we have very little work to dispense with,” was the terse reply of one of the top of officials posted at the Patna office when asked about to give details of the volume of trade, which is carried out from this branch of DGFT.

Normally local people from neighbouring districts of Nepal or products in which the state has got speciality such as Bhagalpur’s silk, Muzaffarpur’s litchi, Hajipur’s banana, Darbhanga’s Makhana among others are exported from here.

The DGFT, under the ministry of commerce and industry, has set an agri export zone in Bihar for litchi to provide better remunerative returns to the farming community.

These zones have been set up for the development of specific products from geographically contiguous area.