AD Code Registration on ICEGATE 2026: Ports, IFSC and Why Incentives Fail

Short answer. An AD Code is a fourteen digit Authorised Dealer Code issued by the bank where your firm holds its current account, provided that bank is authorised by the Reserve Bank of India to deal in foreign exchange. It is printed on the bank’s own letterhead and it is registered once on ICEGATE. On ICEGATE it is registered under Bank Account Management, where it sits against a customs location code as a Foreign Remittance Account. Your incentive bank account and IFSC is a separate registration under the same menu, made for each customs location you transact at, and since CBIC Circular No. 24/2025-Customs dated 7 October 2025 those requests are approved automatically by the system once the same account and IFSC combination has already been approved at any one location. No shipping bill can be filed without a registered AD Code, and no duty drawback, RoDTEP or IGST refund reaches your account without a validated incentive bank account behind it.

That paragraph is the whole page in miniature. The rest of it exists because in practice this registration goes wrong more often than almost any other first step in Indian exporting, and it goes wrong quietly. Nothing tells you it has failed. Your consignment simply sits, or your incentive money simply never arrives.

Why we wrote this page rather than another checklist

Rasp International has handled DGFT liaison, customs documentation and incentive recovery for Indian exporters out of Agra since 2005, across more than five hundred client files spanning handicrafts, leather, textiles, engineering goods, marine products and processed food. AD Code and port registration is the single most common place where a first time exporter loses a fortnight, and it is one of the most common places where an experienced exporter loses money without ever noticing.

There is a second reason. When we checked the major published guides on this subject in August 2026, including guides from well known DGFT consultancies and cross border payment companies, several of them were still telling exporters that IFSC registration has to be done port by port with manual officer approval at each location. That stopped being true on 7 October 2025. CBIC Circular No. 24/2025-Customs moved that approval to system auto approval. Following the older advice does not break anything, but it makes exporters plan for delays that no longer exist and it makes them chase port officers who are no longer in the loop.

We flag that openly rather than quietly writing the correct version, because knowing which of the ten guides you just read is current is itself the hard part of Indian trade compliance. Everything on this page carries a source and a date, and the references table at the bottom lists every one.

What an AD Code actually is, and what it is not

AD stands for Authorised Dealer. Under the Foreign Exchange Management Act, only banks specifically authorised by the Reserve Bank of India may deal in foreign exchange. Those banks are Authorised Dealer Category I institutions. When your firm opens a current account with such a bank and tells them you intend to trade internationally, the bank allots your account a fourteen digit code that identifies that specific branch as the authorised channel for your foreign exchange.

So the AD Code is not a licence, not a registration you apply to the government for and not something DGFT issues. It is a banking identifier. The government’s role begins only when you register that identifier on ICEGATE so that Indian Customs can link your shipments to a supervised banking channel.

The purpose is regulatory rather than administrative. Every rupee of export proceeds that comes into India has to be traceable to a bank the RBI supervises. The AD Code is the thread that ties a shipping bill filed at a port to a bank account the central bank can see. That is why Customs will not let a shipping bill be generated without it. It is not paperwork for its own sake. It is the mechanism by which India tracks whether export proceeds are actually realised.

A note on the fourteen digits, because exporters ask

Older documentation and some legacy bank formats refer to seven or eight digit AD Codes. Those were branch level identifiers under an earlier convention. The format ICEGATE expects today is fourteen digits, and the letter your bank issues will carry that fourteen digit number. If your bank hands you a shorter number, go back to them and ask specifically for the fourteen digit AD Code for ICEGATE registration. Some branch staff, particularly at smaller branches that rarely handle exporters, will hand over the wrong identifier because they genuinely have not been asked for the right one before.

This is a real and recurring problem. In our experience, the single fastest way to get the correct letter is to ask for the AD Code letter in the format required for ICEGATE bank account registration, and to name the branch’s own forex or trade finance desk rather than the general counter.

What changed between 2020 and 2025, and why it matters to you

This procedure has been simplified three times in five years. Most of the frustration exporters feel comes from following instructions written for a version of the rule that has been superseded.

Read the third row carefully, because it is the one that is most often reported incorrectly. Circular 24/2025 did not abolish the per port submission. The workflow for submitting the request is expressly unchanged. What changed is who approves it. Where a port officer previously reviewed the request manually, the system now grants approval directly, provided that exact bank account and IFSC pairing has already cleared at some other customs location under your IEC. The request then continues to PFMS for validation exactly as before.

The distinction matters operationally. If you assume no submission is needed at the new port, you will wait for a credit that never arrives. If you assume manual approval is needed, you will chase an officer who has nothing to review. Submit, then expect automatic approval, then watch PFMS.

AD Code registration versus incentive bank account registration

These are two different registrations doing two different jobs, and conflating them is where most incentive money goes missing. An exporter can be fully cleared to ship and still never receive a rupee of drawback or RoDTEP, because the first registration governs clearance and the second governs credit.

The row marked silent is the one worth reading twice. A clearance failure announces itself within hours because the consignment does not move. A credit failure announces itself only when someone eventually reconciles the ledger, which for a small exporter can be six months or a year later. By then several shipping bills have gone through and the reconciliation is painful.

In our incentive recovery work at Rasp International, an unvalidated or mismatched incentive bank account is one of the most common reasons a client discovers accrued RoDTEP and drawback sitting undelivered. The claim was correct. The shipping bill was correct. The account behind it was not registered properly, so the credit had nowhere to go.

The PFMS step almost nobody explains

Once Customs approves your incentive bank account, the request does not stop there. It flows to the Public Financial Management System, the central government platform through which payments to citizens and businesses are actually disbursed. PFMS independently validates that the account number and IFSC pairing is live and matches the name on record.

This creates a failure mode that looks impossible from the exporter’s side. Customs shows the account as approved. The scroll generates. The amount is sanctioned. And nothing arrives, because PFMS rejected the account and that rejection is not surfaced anywhere in the ICEGATE interface an exporter normally looks at.

The usual causes are mundane and entirely avoidable. The account name registered with Customs does not exactly match the name the bank holds, often because of an abbreviation, a missing suffix such as Pvt Ltd or a trailing full stop. The account has been converted, migrated after a bank merger or renumbered and the old number is still on record. On the foreign remittance side, the account has to be the current account the bank issued the AD Code against. Note that the ICEGATE user manual expressly allows a savings or a current account to be added as the refund or incentive account, so a savings account is not itself the problem there. The name and number matching is.

Rasp International’s working rule: before registering an incentive bank account, obtain a fresh bank certificate or a pre printed cancelled cheque and register the account name exactly as it is printed there, character for character, including punctuation and capitalisation. Do not type it from memory and do not tidy it up. The systems match strings, not intentions.

Prerequisites before you begin

Every one of these must already exist. Starting the ICEGATE process without them is the main cause of the multi week delays exporters complain about.

• A valid IEC issued by DGFT. The AD Code letter is issued against your IEC, so the IEC has to exist first. It must also be active. An IEC that was deactivated for missing the annual updation window between 1 April and 30 June will block everything downstream
• A current account with an AD Category I bank in the firm’s exact registered name. Not a personal savings account, not an account in a proprietor’s own name where the firm trades under a different name
• GST registration, with the legal name and trade name matching what DGFT and the bank hold
• An ICEGATE login registered against your IEC. This is a one time registration using IEC, PAN, email and mobile
• A Class 3 Digital Signature Certificate in the name of the authorised signatory, with both signing and encryption enabled. A Class 2 certificate will not work and a signing only certificate will fail at submission
• A board resolution or authorisation letter where the signatory is not the proprietor or sole partner

One consistency check before you go further. Open your IEC certificate, your GST certificate and your bank record side by side and compare the legal name, the trade name, the address and the PAN across all three. Any difference, however small, will surface as a rejection later. Fixing a name mismatch at the DGFT end is a Rs 200 IEC modification and a few days. Fixing it after three rejected registrations and a stuck consignment is a different kind of week.

How to get the AD Code letter from your bank

This is the step exporters underestimate. The ICEGATE part takes minutes. The bank part is where the fortnight goes.

Step 1. Confirm your branch is an AD Category I branch

Not every branch of an authorised bank handles foreign exchange. A bank may hold AD Category I authorisation while your particular branch does not have a forex desk. If your branch cannot issue the letter, you have two options: move the current account to a branch of the same bank that does handle forex, or open a second current account at a branch that does. Ask the question before you ask for the letter, because it changes the whole timeline.

Step 2. Request the letter in the correct format

Ask the branch, in writing, for the AD Code letter on bank letterhead for ICEGATE registration. The letter has to carry your firm’s name exactly as the bank holds it, the current account number, the branch address, the IFSC, the fourteen digit AD Code and an authorised signature with the bank’s seal. Address it to The Commissioner of Customs unless your bank uses its own standing format.

Give the branch your IEC certificate copy with the request. Many branches will not issue the letter without seeing it, and sending it up front removes one round trip.

Step 3. Check the letter before you leave the branch

Read it at the counter. Four things go wrong often enough that we treat this as mandatory. The AD Code is short, meaning you have been given a branch identifier rather than the fourteen digit code. The firm name is abbreviated or spelled differently from the IEC. The account number has a transposed digit. The letter is unsigned or unstamped because it came off a template and nobody completed it.

A letter with any of these has to go back, and going back means another visit and another few days. Thirty seconds of reading at the counter routinely saves a week.

Step 4. Get a scan that will actually upload

Documents go up through e-SANCHIT, the customs document upload facility. Scan in colour, not greyscale and not black and white, at a resolution that keeps the seal and signature legible. A phone photograph taken at an angle with a shadow across the letterhead is the most common cause of a rejected upload. Lay the letter flat, scan it, save it as a clean PDF.

How to register the AD Code on ICEGATE

With a correct letter in hand and a working Class 3 DSC, this is a short process.

Step 1. Log in to ICEGATE against your IEC

Use the ICEGATE portal at icegate.gov.in with the credentials registered against your IEC. If you have never registered, complete the one time ICEGATE registration first using IEC, PAN, email and mobile. Use a desktop browser that is current. The DSC signing component does not behave reliably on older browsers or on mobile.

Step 2. Open Bank Account Management

From the dashboard, go to the bank account management section and select Authorised Dealer Code registration. Your linked bank accounts appear here. Select the bank and branch, at which point the AD Code associated with that branch populates against your account.

Step 3. Upload the AD Code letter and supporting documents

Attach the bank letter along with the supporting set. In practice that means IEC certificate, GST registration certificate, PAN of the firm, PAN and identity proof of the authorised signatory, a pre printed cancelled cheque or bank certificate and a board resolution or authorisation letter where applicable.

On cancelled cheques, one point that catches exporters repeatedly across DGFT and Customs processes alike. The cheque must be pre printed with the firm’s name. A handwritten name on a blank cheque leaf is rejected. If your cheque book is not personalised, ask the bank for a bank certificate instead, which is usually faster to obtain than a reprinted cheque book.

Step 4. Sign with the Class 3 DSC and submit

Sign the submission with the Class 3 DSC of the authorised signatory. The name on the DSC should correspond to the person named in the authorisation. A DSC issued in a different person’s name, however senior they are in the firm, creates a mismatch that gets queried.

Step 5. Expect a decision on a defined timeline

CBIC Instruction No. 25/2023-Customs set a service standard. Applications made before 2 PM are to be dealt with the same day, and applications made otherwise are to be disposed of by 2 PM on the next working day. That is a stated timeline you can reference if a port sits on your file. In practice, where documents are clean and the DSC works, approval frequently comes through the same working day.

Step 6. Register the incentive bank account for the port

Separately, register the incentive bank account and IFSC for the port you will export from. This is the registration that makes drawback, RoDTEP and IGST refund credit reach you. Under Circular No. 24/2025-Customs, if the same account and IFSC pairing has already been approved at any customs location under your IEC, the system approves this one automatically without routing it to the port officer. It then flows on to PFMS for validation.

Step 7. Verify against a live shipping bill, not a screen

An approval screen is not proof the chain works. The real confirmation is the first shipping bill filing at that location going through cleanly with the AD Code accepted, and then the first incentive credit landing in the registered account. Until money has actually moved once, treat the registration as unproven. This is the discipline we apply on client files and it has caught problems that every dashboard reported as fine.

Four situations we see repeatedly, and what actually happened

Process descriptions are easy to write and easy to forget. These are the shapes the failure actually takes.

The handicraft exporter whose first consignment sat at the ICD

A Moradabad metalware unit had its IEC, its GST and a buyer in Germany. The goods were stuffed and at the inland container depot. The shipping bill would not generate. The CHA reported an AD Code issue. The bank had issued a letter, but the letter carried the branch code rather than the fourteen digit AD Code, because the branch had never issued one for ICEGATE before and used a general format.

The lesson is not that the bank was careless. It is that a branch which rarely serves exporters will hand you what it has, and the exporter is the only person in the chain who knows what was actually needed. Ask by name for the fourteen digit AD Code for ICEGATE registration and read the letter before leaving.

The exporter whose clearance was perfect and whose money never came

A leather goods exporter shipped consistently for several quarters with no clearance problem at all. Shipping bills filed, consignments moved, buyers paid. What had not happened was a validated incentive bank account. Drawback and RoDTEP accrued against the shipping bills and went nowhere.

This is the silent failure in the comparison table above, and it is the reason we treat the incentive bank account as a separate line item on every client checklist rather than an appendix to AD Code registration. Clearance working tells you nothing about whether credit will work.

The firm that changed banks and told nobody

An engineering goods exporter moved its current account to a different bank for better forex rates. Commercially sensible. Nobody updated ICEGATE. The AD Code on record pointed at a closed account at the previous bank. Clearance continued for a while on the strength of the existing registration, and the incentive credits failed at PFMS because the account behind them no longer existed.

Any change to the banking relationship, a new bank, a new branch, a merged bank that renumbered accounts or an account converted from one product to another, requires the registration to be updated. Treat a banking change as a compliance event, not just a treasury decision.

The exporter who was quoted for approvals that no longer happen

A textile exporter expanding from one location to three was told by a service provider that the incentive bank account would need manual approval from the port officer at each new location, and was quoted and scheduled accordingly. That stopped being true on 7 October 2025. Under CBIC Circular No. 24/2025-Customs, once the same incentive bank account and IFSC pairing has been approved at any one customs location under that IEC, the system approves the others directly and does not route them to a port officer at all. The submission still has to be made. The waiting and the chasing do not.

Outdated advice in this area costs money in both directions. It makes exporters pay for work that no longer exists and it makes them skip work that still does. It is also worth saying plainly that the published guidance on AD Code registration, including guidance from large and otherwise reliable firms, contains a persistent misreading of Public Notice No. 93/2020 that we address in the questions below. When the sources disagree, read the notice.

Where AD Code problems quietly kill your RoDTEP and drawback

This is the connection most guides on this subject never make, and it is the one with money attached.

Duty drawback pays directly into the exporter’s bank account. RoDTEP does not pay cash at all. It generates a scroll which you convert to an electronic scrip in your ICEGATE credit ledger, and that ledger account is itself tied to your registered bank details. In both cases the registered bank account is not an administrative detail. It is the delivery mechanism.

Customs and the RBI cross verify your IFSC, AD Code, IEC, PAN and GSTIN electronically against each other. Where those do not agree, the claim does not generate an error the exporter sees. It simply does not complete. Combine that with the other well known silent killer on the RoDTEP side, the RoDTEP declaration not being flagged on the shipping bill at the time of filing, which cannot be added after the Let Export Order is issued, and you have two independent ways for an entirely legitimate claim to disappear without a single notification.

If you are auditing past claims, check both. Start with whether the RoDTEP flag was set on the shipping bills, then check whether the incentive account behind them ever validated. In our incentive recovery files those two account for the large majority of what clients thought they had claimed and had not. For the full claim chain and the current rate position see RoDTEP scheme explained and the current RoDTEP rates for 2026. For drawback specifically see duty drawback for Indian exporters.

Port and route notes for exporters in Uttar Pradesh and the Delhi NCR

Because Rasp International works out of Agra, most of our first time registrations route through the northern inland network rather than a coastal port, and the practicalities differ.

Exporters in Agra, Firozabad, Aligarh, Mathura and the surrounding belt commonly clear through inland container depots in the Delhi NCR region and move to a gateway port for the sea leg. Moradabad and the western UP handicraft belt work similarly. Kanpur’s leather cluster and the Bhadohi and Mirzapur carpet belt have their own established routings. Air consignments, which matter for high value handicrafts, jewellery components and samples, go through the airport cargo terminals.

The reason this matters for AD Code work is that under the single registration rule your AD Code covers all of these automatically. What does not carry over automatically is your operational familiarity. Each location has its own document handling rhythm, its own CHA ecosystem and its own tolerance for imperfect paperwork. An exporter who has cleared comfortably at one ICD for years can find the first consignment at a new location queried on documentation that never attracted attention before.

Our practical advice when adding a location: submit the incentive bank account registration for it before the first consignment rather than alongside it, and treat the first shipment through any new location as the one where you check every document twice.

Cost, timeline and who should do it

There is no government fee for the ICEGATE registration itself. Costs that do arise are the bank’s own processing charge for issuing the AD Code letter, which varies by bank and branch, the cost of a Class 3 Digital Signature Certificate if you do not already hold one and whatever you pay for professional handling.

On timeline, the ICEGATE decision itself is fast and now carries a stated service standard. The variable is the bank. A branch with an active forex desk that regularly serves exporters can issue the letter in a day or two. A branch that has never issued one can take considerably longer, mostly spent locating the right internal format.

We are not going to tell you that every exporter needs a consultant for this. A well organised firm with clean records and a cooperative bank branch can complete an AD Code registration without help. What we will say is that the two things people most often get wrong, exact string matching across documents and the separate incentive bank account, are precisely the things that are invisible until they cost you.

The two account types inside ICEGATE Bank Account Management

Most guides describe this as one process. Inside ICEGATE it is two, sitting under the same Bank Account tab, and knowing which one you are looking at removes most of the confusion around why clearance works and money does not.

Read the last cell again. The refund and incentive account is the only one of the two that carries a separate PFMS status, and that status is mapped to a specific location code. If you only ever check Status at Customs you are checking the wrong field. An account can read as approved at customs and still be sitting unvalidated at PFMS, which is precisely the state in which everything clears and nothing is credited.

Adding an account follows a short sequence. Open the Bank Account tab, select the account type, click Add New Bank Account, enter the bank name, branch name, AD Code, bank account number, customs location, document type and IRN, upload the proof document, then click Verify. On verification the system auto populates the AD Code against the IRN and you submit. Modification runs through the Modify Account button against an existing entry.

What the bank authorisation letter must actually contain

This is where most of the delay lives, and it is entirely avoidable if you hand your branch the requirement rather than asking them to work it out. There are two reference points and they are not identical, which is itself worth knowing.

The national requirement, per Instruction 25/2023 as reproduced in the ICEGATE user manual

The bank authorisation letter must incorporate the name of the exporter and the exporter address, the IEC number issued by DGFT, the PAN associated with that IEC, the bank account number associated with that IEC, the name on that bank account, a confirmation by the bank that the PAN linked with the account is the same as the PAN linked with the IEC, the AD Code or IFSC as the case may be, and the name, address, contact details and official email ID of the bank branch holding the account. Alongside it goes a copy of the cancelled cheque for that account, or the latest bank statement for that account endorsed by the bank.

Two things in that list are routinely missed. The bank has to positively confirm the PAN match between account and IEC, which a generic account confirmation letter will not do. And the branch’s official email ID has to be on the letter, because that address is used to verify the letter is genuine.

Note also that a bank statement endorsed by the bank is an accepted alternative to a cancelled cheque at the national level. If your cheque book is not personalised with the firm’s name, this is usually the faster route.

The Annexure-A format, per Public Notice No. 93/2020

The Annexure-A letter certifies that the firm has held a current or credit account with the branch since a stated date, and that the name, address and director, partner or proprietor details match the IEC. It then requires twelve fields: bank account number, AD Code, IFSC, name of the authorised signatory on the bank account, email ID of the account holder, contact number of the account holder, name of bank, name of branch, address of branch, email ID of branch, contact number of branch, and the name and code of the issuing authority. It carries the signature of the issuing authority and the bank stamp.

The accompanying document set there is the authorisation letter, a copy of the IEC, a copy of the GST registration certificate, a copy of the PAN card of the company or partnership entity, a copy of the PAN card of the authorised signatory on the bank account, and a copy of the cancelled cheque. For a modification to a registered IFSC or bank account, the same set plus a no objection certificate from the bank whose account is currently registered.

The instruction almost nobody passes on to their bank

The exporter is advised to request the bank to send the authorisation letter, and any no objection certificate, to the customs EDI section directly from the branch’s own email ID. Where that does not happen, customs cross checks the genuineness of the letter with the bank by email after receiving the application, and that round trip is where days disappear. Once genuineness is verified, the EDI section is to process the request in the system on the same day.

Rasp International’s practice: we ask the branch to do both. Hand us the signed letter for the e-SANCHIT upload and email the same letter from the branch email ID to the customs EDI address for that location on the same day. It costs the branch one email and it removes the single most common cause of a stalled registration.

Frequently asked questions

Is IFSC registration still required port by port?

The submission is still made for each port and the workflow for submitting is unchanged. What changed under CBIC Circular No. 24/2025-Customs dated 7 October 2025 is the approval. Once the same bank account and IFSC combination has been approved at any one customs location under your IEC, the system approves subsequent requests automatically without routing them to a port officer. The request then continues to PFMS for validation.

How long does AD Code registration take on ICEGATE?

CBIC Instruction No. 25/2023-Customs sets the standard: applications made before 2 PM are to be dealt with the same day, and others by 2 PM the next working day. Where documents are clean and the DSC is working, same day approval is common. The longer part of the overall timeline is usually obtaining the letter from your bank, not the portal step.

Does an AD Code expire or need renewal?

There is no prescribed expiry. It remains valid unless something behind it changes. A new bank, a new branch, a renumbered account after a bank merger or a change in the firm’s name or constitution all require the registration to be updated. Treat any change in your banking relationship as a trigger to re verify the registration.

Can I file a shipping bill without a registered AD Code?

No. The shipping bill will not generate. This is a hard block, not a delay, and it is the reason AD Code registration has to be completed before your first consignment is ready rather than while it is sitting at the port.

What type of Digital Signature Certificate does ICEGATE require?

A Class 3 certificate with both signing and encryption enabled, issued in the name of the authorised signatory. Class 2 certificates are not accepted and a signing only certificate will fail at submission.

Why has my drawback or RoDTEP not been credited even though clearance worked?

Clearance and credit run on different registrations. Clearance depends on the AD Code. Credit depends on a registered incentive bank account that has validated in PFMS. The most common causes are a name string that does not exactly match what the bank holds, a stale account number after a bank merger or migration or an account that was never registered for that port at all. Separately on the RoDTEP side, if the RoDTEP declaration was not flagged on the shipping bill at filing, the claim cannot be created at all and cannot be added after the Let Export Order.

My bank gave me an eight digit code. Is that my AD Code?

Probably not the one ICEGATE wants. Shorter codes are branch identifiers from an earlier convention. Go back and ask specifically for the fourteen digit AD Code required for ICEGATE bank account registration, and ask at the branch’s forex or trade finance desk rather than the general counter.

Can a proprietorship firm register an AD Code?

Yes. The requirement is a current account with an AD Category I bank held in the firm’s name, not a particular constitution. What matters is that the account name matches the name on the IEC exactly. Proprietors trading under a business name distinct from their personal name should check this carefully, because a personal savings account will not serve and a name mismatch between the personal name and the trade name is a common rejection.

Can I link more than one bank account to my IEC?

Multiple AD Codes corresponding to different bank accounts can be linked to an IEC, subject to ICEGATE’s rules. Where exporters get into difficulty is not the linking but the reconciliation, because incentive credits go to the registered incentive account and not necessarily to the account the exporter assumes. If you maintain more than one, know which one is registered for incentives at each location.

How Rasp International handles this

We obtain the bank letter in the correct format, run the consistency check across your IEC, GST and banking records before anything is submitted, prepare and file the ICEGATE registration, register the incentive bank account for the locations you actually ship from and follow through to PFMS validation rather than stopping at an approval screen. Where an exporter comes to us after the fact because incentives have not arrived, we work backwards through the shipping bills and the account registration to find where the chain broke.

Our family has been in international trade since 2005 and Rasp International is ISO 9001:2015 certified. If your consignment is stuck, or if you have been exporting for a while and suspect incentives are accruing somewhere you cannot see, talk to our team.

References and official sources

Every rule, circular number and date on this page is traceable to a primary Government of India source. Secondary sources are marked where they reproduce primary text. Where published guidance elsewhere conflicts with the current position we have said so in the body rather than resolving it silently.

Last verified 12 August 2026 by Rasp International against the primary instruments listed above. Where a circular is superseded after this date we update the page and note the change here.

Correction note, 12 August 2026. An earlier version of this page repeated the widely published claim that Public Notice No. 93/2020 established AD Code registration as a single pan India registration. On reading the primary document that claim does not hold. Public Notice No. 93/2020 is a Jawaharlal Nehru Custom House local notice on e-SANCHIT document upload and the Annexure-A letter format. Having since obtained the primary text of CBIC Instruction No. 25/2023-Customs, we can identify the correct instrument: DG Systems Advisory No. 10/2022 dated 14 June 2022, referenced within Instruction 25/2023, is what actually established single point AD Code registration. The page has been updated accordingly and every AD Code and ICEGATE instrument referenced on this page is now hosted on this site and linked directly, rather than pointed at a government homepage. We publish corrections rather than editing quietly, because on this subject knowing which source is reliable is most of the work.

Related reading

• Importer Exporter Code, the registration everything else sits on
• RoDTEP scheme explained
• Current RoDTEP rates for 2026
• Duty drawback for Indian exporters
• Customs clearance services
• DGFT consulting and liaison
• Export Promotion Mission, the current framework behind India’s export schemes
• How the Government of India now covers up to 95 percent of your certification and audit cost