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A duty credit scrip has a face value: the rupees of customs duty it can pay. It trades at a price below that face value. The gap is the discount, and understanding what moves it is the difference between selling well and selling first.
In one line: the discount is the price of turning a future duty credit into cash today, and it widens as the credit gets closer to being worthless.

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Why a scrip is worth less than face

Face value is duty-paying power, not money. To realise it, the holder must be an importer with a matching duty bill inside the scrip’s remaining validity. Most scrip holders are exporters who import little, so they need someone else to realise it for them. A buyer paying cash today for a credit it will spend later needs compensation for three things:
  1. Time. Cash now versus duty saved later.
  2. Consumption risk. The buyer must actually have the duty bill, in time.
  3. Provenance risk. The credit’s history follows it into the buyer’s ledger.
The discount is the price of those three. It is not a fee and it is not a haggling margin. It is the market clearing between exporters who cannot use credits and importers who can.

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How prices are quoted

Scrip prices are quoted as a percentage of face value. On the ScripX API that is expressed in basis points, where 10,000 bps is 100% of face: Converting to rupees is arithmetic. A scrip with ₹10,00,000 of face value at 9650:
The seller receives ₹9,65,000. The buyer’s saving on the other side of the same trade is ₹35,000 of duty paid with ₹9,65,000 of cash. Money on the API is always integer paise, so that figure is 96500000. Worked examples are in the Money and price annexure.
On a ScripX quote, all_in_paise is the whole story. For a seller it is the net amount that lands; for a buyer it is the total cash paid. Nothing is added or deducted after it, and there is no separate fee schedule to reconstruct.

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What moves the discount

Time to expiry

The dominant driver. A scrip with ten months of life is easy for a buyer to consume. A scrip with three weeks left is a race, and it is priced like one. Value goes to zero at expiry, so the discount widens as the date approaches.

Scheme

RODTEP and ROSCTL trade in separate books with different depth and different supply timing. They do not price at parity, and assuming they do costs money.

Size

Face value per scrip and total lot size both matter. A single large scrip is cheaper for a buyer to absorb than the same value in many small ones, because scrips transfer whole and each transfer is its own operation.

Provenance

A credit with a clean shipping-bill chain and a clean selling IEC prices at the market. A credit whose origin cannot be evidenced prices at a risk discount, if it clears at all.

Duty demand

Aggregate importer basic-customs-duty demand is the buy side of the book. Import cycles, tariff changes and seasonal clearance patterns all show up in the price.

Supply

Scroll and scrip issuance runs in waves. A month of heavy issuance puts more paper on offer against the same duty demand, and the discount widens.

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The benchmark: the Scrip Reference Rate

Without a published reference, every scrip trade is a private negotiation between an informed intermediary and an uninformed holder. The Scrip Reference Rate (SRR) is ScripX’s published benchmark price, by scheme and expiry band, every trading day. It is available on the public, no-key surface, so a seller can read the number before taking anyone’s bid:
The SRR is a benchmark published for information. A tradable price for an exact scrip always comes from a firm quote. Do not interpolate your own price off the index.

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Indicative versus firm

The distinction matters more than the number: A ScripX quote is firm: one price for the exact amount, holding until valid_until. On top of that, an order carries a structural limit, min_pct_bps on the sell side as a floor the fill can never cross, and a ceiling on the buy side.

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Reading a quote you have been given

Whoever you deal with, a scrip price should be explainable in one sentence: this scheme, this face value, this much time left, therefore this percentage of face. If the number cannot be explained in those terms, that is the information you needed. Three questions worth asking every time:
  1. What is the benchmark today for this scheme? If the answer is vague, you are negotiating blind.
  2. Is this price firm, and until when? An indicative number is not a price.
  3. Is this all-in? A headline percentage with deductions afterwards is a worse deal than a lower percentage that is net.

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Frequently asked questions

There is no fixed number. The discount moves daily with expiry profile, scheme, lot size and the balance of duty demand against issuance. Read the live benchmark at GET /public/rates rather than working from a remembered figure.
Usually time to expiry, scheme, or lot composition. The benchmark is by scheme and expiry band; a short-dated scrip or a pile of small scrips prices below the headline for structural reasons, not as a penalty.
No. Duty credit scrips fall under HSN 4907 and are exempt under Notification 02/2017. There is no GST on the scrip value in the transfer.
Larger, cleaner, longer-dated lots are easier for a buyer to absorb, and that generally shows in the price. It is a tendency, not a rule, and it can be outweighed by a short expiry.
The quote is firm rather than negotiable, which is the point. You get one number you can accept or decline, and a structural limit on the order so a fill can never cross your floor or ceiling.
In basis points of face value, in fields ending _bps. Money is in integer paise, in fields ending _paise. See Money and price.