How to read Appendix 4R without losing your weekend

Appendix 4R of the Foreign Trade Policy 2023 is the master rate card for RoDTEP. It runs to 312 pages in PDF, organised by HS chapter, with 8,500-plus tariff lines and per-line rate and cap entries. Most exporters look at it once, panic, and outsource the reading to their CA.

This piece is a guided tour. By the end you will know how to look up your own rate, check your cap, and identify the negative-list flag in under 90 seconds.

What the document is actually structured as

The Appendix has three sections:

• Pages 1-12: Administrative notes. Definitions, calculation methodology, value caps, scheme exclusions. This is the boring section that determines everything.
• Pages 13-294: The rate matrix. One row per HS-8 code. Six columns: tariff line, description, rate (percent of FOB), value cap (Rs/unit or Rs/kg), eligibility flag, remarks.
• Pages 295-312: The negative list and special notifications. This is the section that determines whether you are eligible at all.

Reading a single row

Take HS 6109.10.00 (T-shirts of cotton, knitted). The row reads:

Tariff	Description	Rate	Value cap	Flag
61091000	T-shirts, singlets etc, of cotton, knitted	2.6%	Rs 32/piece	E

What this tells you: for every piece of HS 6109.10.00 you export at FOB value up to Rs 1,230 (32 / 0.026), you get the full 2.6 percent. Above Rs 1,230 FOB per piece, your RoDTEP is capped at Rs 32 per piece in absolute terms. The "E" flag confirms eligibility (D would mean deferred or under review).

Where the value cap matters most

Value caps bite hardest in premium goods. Cashmere knit sweaters at Rs 4,500 FOB per piece on HS 6110.12.00 carry a rate of 2.9 percent and a cap of Rs 65 per piece. Without the cap, the claim would be Rs 130. With the cap, you get Rs 65. The cap delivers 50 percent of the headline rate.

If your average unit FOB is above the implicit cap threshold (cap divided by rate), the headline rate is misleading. You need to compute the effective rate per piece, not per percentage.

How to read the negative list

Page 297 onwards lists products excluded from RoDTEP. Read this every quarter. Iron and steel scrap was added in March 2025 (Notification No. 22/2025). Several copper and aluminium scrap codes followed in April 2025.

The negative list is the single most common reason exporters file shipping bills under wrong codes. If your product is on the list, your CA must use the closest eligible adjacent code. This is not a workaround; it is the prescribed method, with documentation requirements.

The 24-month rate history table

Appendix 4R does not include a rate history. You have to construct it from the cumulative gazette notifications. We maintain a historical rate database that we expose per HS code on this site. Lacking that, you can extract the history from the DGFT website's notifications archive, filtered by "RoDTEP rate" in the title.

Rate history matters when you are filing a delayed claim. The rate that applies is the rate effective on the date of shipping bill filing, not the date of claim submission. If you are reconciling a Q3 FY 2024-25 shipping bill in May 2025, you use the November 2024 rate, not the May 2025 (halved) rate.