The GST Council on Thursday approved changes to make it easier for Indian companies to qualify for export benefits when serving overseas customers, including through their own foreign branches, while widening the refund of taxes locked up in input services and plant and machinery. The measures seek to align GST rules more closely with the way Indian services are actually delivered in global markets, addressing some of the long-standing difficulties faced by IT and IT-enabled services, engineering and consulting firms, research organisations and other professional service exporters.