SCOMET List

What it does

The SCOMET List names the items, India's dual use and strategic goods, that cannot be exported, re-exported or transferred without an authorisation. SCOMET stands for Special Chemicals, Organisms, Materials, Equipment and Technologies. The list sits as Appendix 3 to Schedule 2 (Export Policy) of the ITC(HS) classification of export and import items, and it is made under the Foreign Trade (Development and Regulation) Act, 1992. It is arranged in categories, and an item that fits two headings is classified under the more specific one.

The list is a legal instrument that an exporter reads entry by entry. An item is controlled if it meets the description, including the technical parameters. The general notes extend the control to used goods as well as new, to technology that goes with the goods, and, in some cases, to products that incorporate a controlled component.

Who it binds

It binds exporters of the listed items, whether goods, software or technology, and those who send them out for repair, re-export them or transfer the technology. A supply from the domestic tariff area to a special economic zone or an export oriented unit needs no authorisation, but is reported to the Development Commissioner within a week, on the site's reading. An imported SCOMET item cannot be exported, even from a customs bonded warehouse, without authorisation. The Directorate General of Foreign Trade is the licensing authority for the categories discussed in the site's note.

What has changed, and when

• The Directorate General of Foreign Trade issued Notification No. 31/2025-26 on 23 September 2025, revising the list. It takes effect 30 days after issue, which is 23 October 2025, a date the notification does not itself state.
• Category 7, which the 2024 list printed as five reserved headings, 7A to 7E, is now populated with emerging technology items. Category 8 keeps the general semiconductor equipment entry, 8B301.
• The revision's stated effect is that the list has been updated in line with multilateral export control regimes.

What turns on it in practice

For a chip fabricator or a tool supplier, the revision matters because equipment that used to be reached only through the general entry now has named entries of its own. The site's note on semiconductor equipment lists them: lithography, low temperature epitaxy, deposition and dry etching equipment, masks, probing equipment and scanning electron microscopes, together with the related software and technology. A tool that a supplier thought was outside the list may now be inside it.

The licence process follows the Foreign Trade Policy 2023 and the Handbook of Procedures. The exporter applies online on the DGFT portal with an end user certificate, and the original goes to the SCOMET Cell in hard copy. An Inter-Ministerial Working Group considers the end user's credentials, the integrity of the supply chain, the risk of diversion, and India's commitments. The exporter keeps records for at least five years. A catch-all paragraph also requires an authorisation for an unlisted item that the exporter has been told, or has reason to believe, risks diversion to weapons of mass destruction, missiles or military use.

Technology is where contracts go wrong. A service agreement under which a supplier passes process recipes or know-how to an overseas customer may be an export of controlled technology, and a repair arrangement may be an export in each direction. The exporter's classification, the end use and the authorisation should be recorded before the shipment, and a contract can make delivery subject to the grant of the licence.

The site's trade controls note, India's export control list now names chip manufacturing tools, and shipping or re-exporting them needs a licence, is the detailed work on this list.