The RELIEF Scheme 2026: How War-Risk Export Cover Now Works for India's West Asia Trade

On 19 March 2026 the government launched the RELIEF Scheme (Resilience and Logistics Intervention for Export Facilitation) through ECGC, following the 2 March activation of an Inter-Ministerial Group on supply-chain resilience. The trigger was the Gulf and wider West Asia maritime corridor seizing up. With tension around the Strait of Hormuz, shipping lines and protection-and-indemnity markets slapped on War Risk Surcharges, Emergency Conflict Surcharges and Additional War Risk Premiums, and freight on key routes climbed in the range of 90 to 100 percent.

The important framing for a broker is what RELIEF is not. It is not a new standalone policy your client buys off a rate card. It is a time-boxed, government-funded top-up that sits on top of ordinary ECGC credit insurance (or, for one cohort, reimburses costs entirely outside the ECGC policy). The government reimburses ECGC for claims that run above normal coverage, so the corporation can extend cover it would not otherwise price at these risk levels.

That distinction governs everything downstream. When an exporter rings asking whether RELIEF covers a vessel stuck off Fujairah, the honest answer is that the cargo damage sits under their marine policy, while RELIEF addresses the credit, surcharge and obligation-relief side. Brokers who blur the two will set up a claim that the wrong policy has to decline.

RELIEF runs on three components, and each maps to a different client profile. Read them as three separate products that happen to share a name.

Component I gives 100 percent credit-insurance cover for shipments dispatched between 14 February and 15 March 2026, available to existing ECGC policyholders. The government reimburses ECGC for the slice of any claim that exceeds the policyholder's normal cover percentage. This is the look-back tier, designed to retro-protect shipments already on the water when the corridor blew up.

Component II offers up to 95 percent cover for shipments between 16 March and 15 June 2026, and is meant to pull more exporters into taking ECGC cover for the disruption window. Again the government funds the excess over standard protection. This is the broadest tier by volume, and with its dispatch window now closing, the live work has shifted from placing fresh cover to filing claims on shipments already despatched inside it.

Component III is the outlier. It targets non-ECGC MSME exporters and reimburses up to 50 percent of additional freight and insurance cost (the War Risk Surcharge, Emergency Conflict Surcharge, Additional War Risk Premium and similar conflict-related surcharges) for shipments in the 14 February to 15 March window, capped at Rs 50 lakh per exporter. This tier does not require an ECGC policy at all; it is a cost-reimbursement grant for the smaller exporter who was never going to buy credit cover but still ate the surcharge.

How to triage a client in one question

Ask whether they hold an ECGC policy. If yes, they are a Component I or II conversation depending on shipment dates. If no, and they are an MSME, Component III is the freight-surcharge reimbursement route. A mid-size exporter with no ECGC cover and Component II shipments has a decision to make: take ECGC cover now to access the 95 percent tier, or sit outside it. That decision is the broker's value-add.

RELIEF is geographically scoped to the West Asia and Gulf corridor. The covered destinations include the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Iraq, Iran and Yemen. As the disruption spread, the government expanded the list to add Egypt and Jordan, recognising that Red Sea and Suez diversions were dragging those markets into the same surcharge regime.

This matters because West Asia is not a marginal market for India. The corridor carries a significant share of India's merchandise trade, both outbound (engineering goods, textiles, pharmaceuticals, rice and processed food, gems and jewellery) and inbound (crude, fertiliser, edible oil). A surcharge shock here is not a niche event; it touches a large slice of the export book that brokers service.

On cargo types, the scheme is deliberately broad. It applies across full-container-load, less-than-container-load and reefer (perishable) consignments. The reefer inclusion is worth flagging to food-processing and pharma clients, because perishable and temperature-sensitive cargo is exactly what suffers most from corridor diversions and longer transit times around the Cape.

Confirm the destination against the current list before you advise. The country schedule was expanded once already; a shipment to Egypt or Jordan that looked out-of-scope under the original 19 March notification may now qualify under the expansion. Always check the live ECGC notification rather than an early news report, because the schedule moved once and may move again.

The practical step for a broker is to overlay the country list onto each client's shipment calendar for the disruption window. Pull the export ledger, filter for the listed destinations and the relevant dates, and you have an immediate worklist of consignments that may attract Component I or II cover or Component III reimbursement. Do not wait for the client to self-identify eligible shipments; most will not connect a freight-invoice surcharge to a government scheme on their own.

Component III is the part clients understand fastest, because it puts cash back against an invoice line they have already paid. The reimbursement covers up to 50 percent of the additional freight and insurance cost attributable to the conflict, and the eligible surcharges are named: War Risk Surcharge, Emergency Conflict Surcharge, Additional War Risk Premium and other conflict-related shipping or insurance surcharges.

The Rs 50 lakh per-exporter cap is the constraint that shapes how you advise. For a small exporter running a handful of Gulf shipments, fifty percent of surcharge across a month of consignments may sit comfortably under the cap and recover most of the pain. For a larger MSME with heavy West Asia volume, the cap bites quickly, and you should set expectations that RELIEF is partial relief, not full indemnity. That honest framing protects the broker relationship when the reimbursement lands smaller than the client hoped.

What you need on file to substantiate the surcharge

1. The freight invoice or bill of lading clearly itemising the War Risk Surcharge, Emergency Conflict Surcharge or Additional War Risk Premium as a separate line, not buried in a blended freight rate.
2. Proof of payment of that surcharge.
3. The shipping bill for each consignment (claims are filed per shipping bill, so granular records matter).
4. Evidence the destination is on the covered list and the shipment date falls in the eligible window.

The recurring failure mode is the blended freight rate. When a forwarder quotes one all-in number with the surcharge absorbed inside it, the exporter cannot isolate the war-risk component and the reimbursement claim weakens. For shipments already despatched in the eligible windows, brokers should be going back to Gulf-route clients now and chasing forwarders for restated invoices that break out the surcharge as a separate line. That single piece of housekeeping is the difference between a clean Component III claim and a contested one.

ECGC has issued a Standard Operating Procedure for RELIEF claims, and the filing route differs by component and by whether the exporter is already a policyholder.

Existing ECGC policyholders submit through the Policy Claim Module on the ECGC portal, the same channel they use for ordinary credit-insurance claims, which keeps the workflow familiar for clients already inside the system. Non-policyholders, the Component III MSME cohort, must first register on the portal using their Importer Exporter Code, PAN and UDYAM registration details before they can lodge a reimbursement claim. That registration step is a real friction point for first-time users, and it is where a broker earns fees by walking the client through it.

The rule that catches people out is that a separate claim is required for each shipping bill. There is no consolidated single filing for a month of shipments. An exporter with thirty Gulf consignments files thirty claims, each tied to its own shipping bill and supporting documents. For a broker, this argues for building a simple tracker: one row per shipping bill, columns for destination, date, surcharge amount, component, document status and claim reference.

There is also obligation relief running alongside RELIEF. Export obligations under Advance Authorisation and EPCG authorisations falling due between 1 March and 31 May 2026 received an automatic extension to 31 August 2026 without penalty. That is a separate benefit from the insurance components, but it sits in the same policy response, and brokers advising exporters on the Gulf disruption should flag it so clients do not breach an authorisation timeline they could have extended for free.

RELIEF is time-boxed and partial by design, and the broker's job is to make clear where it ends. Three boundaries matter.

First, the physical-loss boundary. RELIEF does not pay for cargo destroyed, detained or lost to a war peril. That is the territory of marine cargo war-risk cover and the Institute War Clauses, where the war risk is typically written back as a 24-hour-cancellable extension at an Additional War Risk Premium set by the war-risk market. A client exposed to actual seizure or damage in the Gulf needs that cover in force independently; RELIEF is no substitute for it. The relationship between the two is set out in our note on war-risk insurance for Indian exporters and owners in contested waters.

Second, the time boundary. Component II runs to 15 June 2026 and Component I and III look back to mid-March. Once these windows close, exporters are back to ordinary ECGC cover and commercial trade-credit terms, with no government top-up. If corridor disruption persists past the scheme, clients face the full surcharge and the full credit risk on their own balance sheet. Plan the post-scheme position now, including whether to buy standing political-risk or trade-disruption cover so the next shock is not met empty-handed.

Third, the indemnity-level boundary. Even at its most generous, Component II tops out at 95 percent and Component III at 50 percent of surcharge under a Rs 50 lakh cap. The residual sits with the exporter. For clients with concentrated West Asia exposure, that residual can be material, and it is the case for a layered programme combining ECGC cover, commercial trade-credit insurance and, where the appetite exists, standalone political-violence or trade-disruption cover. For the structural comparison between the state scheme and private capacity, see our piece on ECGC versus commercial trade credit insurance.

With the Component II dispatch window now closed on 15 June 2026, the work shifts from placing cover to recovering on shipments already made, and it is immediate and concrete. Here is the sequence a broking desk should run for every client with West Asia exposure.

1. Screen the book. Filter each client's export ledger for the covered destinations and the scheme windows. Produce a per-client worklist of eligible shipments split by component.
2. Classify each exporter. ECGC policyholder or not, MSME or not. This determines whether they are a Component I or II credit-cover conversation or a Component III reimbursement conversation, and whether they need to register on the portal first.
3. Fix the invoicing on the back catalogue. For every shipment already despatched in the scheme windows, recover freight invoices that itemise the War Risk Surcharge, Emergency Conflict Surcharge and Additional War Risk Premium as separate lines. Blended rates kill Component III claims, so chase forwarders for restated invoices where the surcharge was absorbed.
4. Build the per-shipping-bill pack. Standardise the document set, because every claim is filed per shipping bill. Pre-assemble the packs so filing is mechanical, not investigative.
5. Check the EPCG and Advance Authorisation calendar. Flag any export obligation due between 1 March and 31 May 2026 for the automatic extension to 31 August 2026 so clients do not breach a timeline they could extend at no cost.
6. Set the after-scheme conversation. Use the disruption to open a durable discussion on standing political-risk, trade-disruption and marine war-risk cover, so the client is not relying on an ad-hoc government scheme the next time the corridor turns.

The brokers who win on RELIEF are not the ones who explain the scheme best. They are the ones who turn it into a worklist, impose document discipline before the deadline, and use a temporary state intervention to start a permanent risk-transfer conversation. RELIEF is the conversation-opener; the layered programme is the relationship.