By Aditya Shinde, Founder, Semperworks
A buyer I know wired ₹14 lakh to a supplier who had an IEC number printed right on his letterhead. The goods never came. The IEC was real — it just didn't belong to that company. That's the gap nobody talks about when they explain what IEC is.
What IEC Actually Is
IEC stands for Import Export Code. It's a ten-digit identification number issued by the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), which operates under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. No Indian business or individual can legally import goods into India — or export goods out of it — without a valid IEC.
Think of it as the PAN card of your trade identity. Just like PAN is your gateway to banking and taxes, IEC is your gateway to customs clearance. Without it, your shipment sits at the port, and there's no workaround.
The number itself is linked to your PAN. When DGFT issues an IEC, they tie it to the PAN of the entity — whether that's a proprietorship, partnership, private limited company, or LLP. This is important because it means IEC records can be cross-checked against Income Tax data, which is exactly what verification tools use to catch mismatches.
For most businesses, IEC registration is a one-time process done through the DGFT portal. There's no renewal cycle, no annual fee, no exam. Once you have it, it's valid for the life of the entity — though you should update it if your address, bank details, or directors change.
Who Needs It and Who Doesn't
If you're running a business that buys from overseas suppliers, imports raw materials, sources finished goods from China, UAE, or anywhere outside India — you need IEC. Full stop.
The exemptions are narrow. Government ministries and departments are exempt. Imports for personal use (not for business resale or manufacturing) can sometimes clear without IEC, but the moment commerce is involved, you need one.
For export, the same rule applies. If you're selling goods internationally — whether you're a pharma manufacturer in Pune shipping to Africa or an artisan exporter sending handicrafts to Europe — IEC is mandatory before your bank will process the foreign remittance and before customs will allow the shipment out.
For import-export professionals reading this, the IEC requirement isn't news. What does matter is understanding what IEC tells you about a counterparty — and what it doesn't.
How to Get IEC: The Short Version
The DGFT portal (dgft.gov.in) handles all IEC applications online. You'll need a few things ready: PAN of the entity, Aadhaar of the authorised signatory for OTP verification, a cancelled cheque or bank certificate, and a digital photograph.
The application fee is ₹500. Processing is mostly automated now, and many applicants receive their IEC within 1-2 working days if the documents are clean. If there's a mismatch between PAN details and bank details, it'll sit in queue until you fix it.
Once issued, you can download your IEC certificate from the DGFT portal directly. This certificate shows your IEC number, entity name, PAN, and the branch code of your bank. You'll share this document constantly — with freight forwarders, customs brokers, buyers abroad, banks.
Which means counterparties you've never met will be making decisions based on this document. That cuts both ways.
The Real Problem: IEC Is Easy to Misuse
Here's the part importers often learn too late. IEC is public information. DGFT maintains a searchable database. Anyone can look up an IEC number and find the registered entity name. And that's exactly what fraudulent suppliers exploit.
A supplier can print a genuine IEC number on their letterhead — one that belongs to a completely different company — and a buyer doing only a surface-level check will see a valid-looking code and move forward.
Or consider a subtler version: the IEC is genuine and belongs to the supplier, but it's registered to an old address, a dormant entity, or an individual who left the business two years ago. Nothing in the IEC record flags this.
I've seen this in the incense and pooja items trade specifically. A supplier who checks out on IEC might have zero GST filing history, no traceable physical address, and no digital footprint outside a single IndiaMART listing they created last month.
This is why IEC verification should never be the only check you run.
What a Proper IEC Verification Actually Covers
A real IEC verification cross-references the number against DGFT records and then looks at what surrounds it. Is the entity name on the IEC consistent with the GSTIN they've provided? Does the GST filing history suggest an active business? Does their registered address match what Google Places shows for that business name?
At Vetrade, the IEC check is one of eight signals we run on any supplier or buyer. We pull the IEC record, match it against the GSTIN, check for news fraud signals, detect whether the business has listings on platforms like IndiaMART, TradeIndia, Alibaba, or JustDial, verify the SSL status of any website provided, and run a LinkedIn check to see if the company has a documented presence.
None of these signals alone is conclusive. But together, they build a picture. A supplier with a clean IEC, active GST filings, a verified address, a multi-year IndiaMART profile, and a LinkedIn company page with real employees is a very different risk profile from a supplier with a clean IEC and nothing else.
Where data is missing — say, a supplier has no LinkedIn presence — we treat that as a Verification Gap, not an automatic red flag. Plenty of legitimate small exporters don't have LinkedIn. But it gets flagged so the buyer knows what they could not verify.
You can run a check on any supplier at vetrade.unceasingimpex.com. It takes under two minutes.
What IEC Doesn't Tell You
To be direct about it: IEC tells you the entity has registered intent to trade internationally. That's it. It doesn't tell you they have the goods, the warehouse, the export experience, or the financial stability to fulfil your order.
It doesn't tell you whether they've been flagged in any fraud case. It doesn't tell you whether the person you're emailing actually controls that IEC. It doesn't tell you if the same number is being used across five different letterheads by affiliated parties.
For compliance officers at larger trading firms, this matters for due diligence documentation. You can't submit IEC verification alone as proof of supplier vetting. For SME traders doing it themselves, it matters because the moment you wire money, your leverage is gone.
Verifying IEC is the beginning of supplier verification, not the end of it.
Summary
- IEC (Import Export Code) is a mandatory ten-digit number from DGFT required for all commercial imports and exports in India.
- It's linked to the entity's PAN and is issued once, with no renewal required.
- Getting IEC is straightforward — ₹500 fee, online application, typically processed within a couple of working days.
- IEC is public information, which makes it possible for fraudulent parties to misrepresent it. Seeing a valid IEC on a document is not the same as verifying it belongs to the person showing it.
- A real IEC check cross-references the number against GSTIN, address data, platform presence, and other signals — not just DGFT records.
- Vetrade runs IEC as one of eight verification signals and surfaces Verification Gaps so you know exactly what was and wasn't confirmed.
Questions about Vetrade or supplier verification? Email us at support@semperworks.com