NEW DELHI: In order to spur India's services exports, the government is likely expand the scope of the existing tax incentive scheme to make it more usable and effective under the new five-year foreign trade policy to be unveiled on Wednesday. 

Commerce and industry minister  Nirmala Sitharaman is set to unveil on April 1, after a one-year delay, the 2015-2020 foreign trade policy, which will be in line with the Make in India and Digital India initiatives. The policy is also expected to give a direction to the trade agreements and list opportunities for traders in different markets.

The 'Served from India Scheme' (SFIS), the incentive schemes for services sector, is likely to allow exporters to trade the  tax incentives, which are in the form of duty credit scrips that can be used to pay customs duty on input import of capital goods or consumables.

Services exporters usually do not need imports, as a result of which these benefits go waste. Under the new system the exporters could monetise these benefits by trading them. They may even be allowed to offset 14 per cent service tax using the SFIS scrips. This will particularly benefit sectors such as education, health care, consultancy and architecture that do not import much to sell these in market and encash some of the benefits.