IEC Registration: How Long It Takes and What It Costs
The Importer Exporter Code is a same-week filing with DGFT once entity documents are ready, the real bottleneck is usually the AD bank account, not the IEC itself.
An Importer Exporter Code (IEC) is mandatory before any company can import or export from India, and it's issued by DGFT against PAN, one code per PAN, valid for the entity's lifetime with no renewal needed (annual updation on the portal is required to keep it active). The online filing itself typically clears in 3 to 7 working days once PAN, bank details, and a cancelled cheque or bank certificate are in hand.
Government fee is nominal (a few thousand rupees); professional fees for preparing and filing the application typically range from roughly 5,000 to 15,000 rupees depending on complexity. The part that actually extends the timeline is opening an AD category bank account for the entity, banks in India can take 2 to 4 weeks to complete KYC for a newly incorporated foreign-owned subsidiary, and IEC issuance is gated on having valid bank details to submit.
Sequence matters: start the bank account opening in parallel with incorporation, not after, it's consistently the longest pole in the import/export readiness timeline, not the IEC filing itself.