Prabhu urges ministries to tap opportunities with other countries to enhance exports

New Delhi, Oct 3 (KNN) Union Minister of Commerce & Industry and Civil Aviation, Suresh Prabhu has urged different ministries to work on tapping the opportunities with countries, particularly in South Asia, as there is huge potential to increase India’s exports.

Reviewing the sectoral export promotion plans prepared by Ministries and Departments of the Government of India, he emphasized on the need to create more jobs in India with a focus on labour-intensive manufacturing SEZs.

This was the third inter-ministerial meeting on Sectoral Export Promotion Strategy which was attended by Commerce Secretary, Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), Secretaries of Textiles and Chemicals and Petrochemicals, other senior officers from Ministries and Departments of Electronics, MSME, Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Defence Production.

With the focus on nine sectors- gems and jewellery, leather, textile and apparel, engineering, electronics, chemicals and petrochemicals, pharma, agri and allied and marine products to boost exports, Commerce Ministry appreciated the inter-ministerial teamwork leading to formulation of the current sectoral export strategy.

Speaking on the occasion, Prabhu also suggested the possibility of collaborative exports in partnership with other countries may be explored.

He also proposed that possible barter arrangements with specific countries may be explored.

Ministries should involve not just the Export Promotion Councils but also the strong regional trade associations to reach out to potential exporters, he added.

Suresh Prabhu asked the line ministries to adhere to India’s WTO commitments while designing their export promotion policies.

He further suggested for holding a separate meeting on the services sector to examine the issues relating to remittances and other capital flows.

The Commerce Minister emphasised that China and USA are emerging opportunities and industries which are relocating from China on account of rising labour cost may be invited to invest in India after immediately revising regulatory procedures.

Commerce Secretary, Anup Wadhawan also informed the participants that comprehensive efforts are being made for promoting exports of merchandise and services to improve and stabilise the current account.

He stated that specific short and long term goals and territory & commodity wise action points, have been identified by the Commerce Department for export promotion.

He apprised that discussions are also on to provide priority sector status to export credit, to enhance the volume of credit and for enhancement of allocation for interest subvention scheme and for SEIS and MEIS.

Presenting the status report of exports, DGFT informed the participants that merchandise exports are up by 16.13% to USD 136.10 billion in April- August 2018-19 while services exports are up by 28.74% to USD 85.74 billion.

Key sectors showing growth in April-August 2018-19 YoY are petroleum products (52.42%), chemicals (35.41%), plastics and linoleum (36.66%) and electronic goods (28.28%), DGFT added.

The overall exports have grown by 20.69% in April- August 2018-19 to 221.83 billion (Merchandise and Services combined), it added.

DGFT further informed that based on the inputs received from Export Promotion Councils, line ministries and other stakeholders, a comprehensive export strategy and action plan has been finalised.

Commodity-wise and territory-wise specific short-term and long-term goals have been put on a matrix, to enable regular monitoring of implementation of action plan at the highest level.

Issues like removal of pre-import condition, retrospective amendment in CGST rules, allowing flexibility of product mix in case of pharma products as long as pollution load is same, have been taken up with the respective ministries.

The Secretaries and senior officials from various ministries elaborated on the various initiatives taken by their departments to boost exports in their respective sectors.