Prashant Narang

This paper evaluates whether India’s Customs Authority for Advance Rulings (CAARs) delivers the legal certainty and predictability required of an advance ruling regime under Article 3 of the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA). An analysis of CAAR decisions issued between January 2021 and December 2024 shows that fewer than 53% of rulings are delivered within the statutory three-month time frame prescribed under Indian customs law. Delays are structurally embedded in CAAR’s operating model, driven by sequential decision-making, mandatory reliance on port-level commissioner inputs, and the absence of dedicated in-house technical expertise. CAAR’s under-performance is best understood as a design failure, not a capacity constraint: port-specific applicability and a three-year validity limit undermine the very certainty that advance rulings are meant to provide, even where individual officers act diligently. The policy implications are immediate: CAAR requires a dedicated internal technical unit, explicit confirmation of nationwide binding effect, and a reassessment, if not removal of the three-year validity restriction. Treating CAAR’s shortcomings as a design flaw rather than a staffing deficit is essential to restoring confidence in advance rulings as a trade facilitation tool, aligning India’s practice with Article 3 of the TFA, and protecting legitimate reliance interests of traders and investors.