Piyush Goyal holds meeting with Export Promotion Councils to discuss various issues of international trade

New Delhi, May 12 (KNN) Union Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal, and Senior Officers of the Department of Commerce and Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) have held a meeting with the Export Promotion Councils to discuss various issues concerning international trade.

Goyal complimented the exporters for their encouraging performance, even during such trying times. He noted that India’s merchandise exports in April 2021 was 30.21 billion dollars, an increase of 197.03 per cent over 10.17 billion dollars in April 2020 and an increase of 16.03 per cent over 26.04 billion dollars in April 2019.

''The value of Export in the first week of May 2021 is also up by almost 9 per cent over the same period of 2019-20 (6.48 billion dollars). Export excluding POL, is even better, and has increased in this period by 15 per cent over same period of 2019-20. The performance of exports in April’21 and 2020-21 gives a hope that an ambitious target of 400 billion dollars merchandise exports can be achieved this year,'' he added.

There is a large potential for enhancing exports in several sectors like Pharma, Engineering, Auto-component, Fisheries and Agro-products, he said.

Regarding the issues raised by the participants, Goyal said that they should approach the COVID helpdesk of the Department for resolving the problems emanating due to COVID related measures. He said that the Department of Commerce has taken up several issues of exporters with the Ministry of Finance for their early resolution, like RoDTEP, MEIS, Inverted duty structure etc.

He also called upon the exporters to take advantage of the Production-Linked Incentive schemes for various sectors which have been announced.