New Delhi, May 9 (KNN) Commerce & Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu has asked secretaries and senior officers from different Ministries and Departments to prepare an action plan with short term targets on boosting exports and send it to his ministry within the next fortnight.

Prabhu, on Tuesday, addressed secretaries and senior officers in the first inter-ministerial meeting on Sectoral Export Promotion Strategy.

The meeting was attended by Secretaries to Government of India from Department of Commerce, DIPP, Electronics and IT, Animal Husbandry and Dairying and MSME, besides senior officers from about 14 other administrative Ministries/Departments including Agriculture, Textiles, Petroleum, Food Processing Industries, Pharma, Chemical and Petrochemical, Defence production and MEA which are concerned with various product groups which comprise a substantial part of India’s merchandise exports.

Commerce Minister asked all officers to prepare an action plan on boosting exports of products being handled by their respective Ministries and send it to the Department of Commerce within the next fortnight.

He stressed that the action plan should also have short term targets which are achievable in the next two months and the Department of Commerce will take the assistance of Ministry of External Affairs to implement the action plans through its commercial missions abroad.

Minister informed that the Union Cabinet has accorded approval of Rs. 5000 crores to promote export of services in champion sectors and the Department of Commerce (DoC) is organizing the next Global Exhibition on export of Services at Mumbai on 15th May 2018.

He told the respective Ministries and Departments that DoC as well as the ITPO can organize road-shows and exhibitions for their sectors and products.

Minister stated that a holistic approach to manufacturing and exports is the need of the hour as protectionist approach may actually have a negative impact on value added items of export. We need to push the idea of looking for new markets as well as exporting new products.

Ministries should work out the strategy, and after receiving the plans, DoC will organize further meetings with export promotion councils, trading houses as well as major exporters. A ‘Best Exporting Ministry/Dept. Award’ will also be announced.

The Minister advised the EXIM bank to prepare an action plan to alleviate the financial difficulties being faced by exporters. Similarly the FPI sector can take the help of NABARD for financing their projects. The Minister announced that the arrangement for having inter-ministerial meetings to boost exports with concerned administrative ministries will be institutionalized by DoC.

Minister of State, Commerce & Industry, CR Chaudhary invited attention to stagnating exports in gem and jewellery, textiles and leather sectors and exhorted the Departments to come up with new proposals to boost exports in these areas.

Commerce Secretary, Rita Teaotia informed the officers that while there has been a 10% growth in merchandise exports in the current year, our share in global trade is static at 1.7% in merchandise exports and 3.4% is services exports. We need to look at new markets. While we have done well in US and Europe there has not been adequate focus on fast emerging markets in Asia. We need to focus more on exports to China, Latin America and Africa.

DGFT Alok Chaturvedi observed that India’s share of exports is high in goods which are less traded and low in goods that are traded more in the world. This needs to be realigned.

DG highlighted the sectors where the export share of the sector in India’s exports is less compared to the share of the sector in world exports. These were identified as potential sectors.