By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, JULY 05, 2018: THE Union Commerce & Aviation Minister, Suresh Prabhu, interacted with trading houses seeking suggestions on formulation of strategy for increasing exports by USD 100 billion in next few years. Mr Prabhu has informed that export performance has been encouraging, since merchandise exports crossed USD 300 billion and registered a growth of 10% in last year to approx 20% this year. Mid-term review of Foreign Trade Policy led to increasing export incentives by 33% for MSME and labour intensive sectors. Earlier, Exports Relief Package was announced by GST Council restoring schemes of duty free procurement of inputs for exports under Advanced Authorisation/Export Promotion Capital Goods. Government has been proactive in GST refunds through the refund fortnight organised in March and June 2018. More than Rs 40,000 crore have been refunded so far. Refund processes are being streamlined further and made fully automated.

As a part of export strategy, the FIEO was called for enhancing exports by USD 100 billion in the short term. In pursuence of the same, exporters raised concerns about uncertainties in international trade like tariff increases, volatilities in currencies and review of GSP regime by US. Political developments in Iran, Russia and the Middle-East have added to the uncertainties. Domestically also, cost of credit is showing upward trends, banks are adopting rigid approach in disbursement of credit and liquidity challenges will continue to exist until GST refund process is made fully automatic with minimum human interaction. Exporters suggested for providing branding assistance in existing and new export markets, using Lines of Credit as marketing tool, support for Research & Development, and promoting e-commerce.

Mr Prabhu also assured the exporters that Government is fully seized of their concerns and is addressing them in the best interests of the country. In the interaction, a four-pronged strategy prepared by FIEO for increasing exports by USD 100 billion was discussed, which has identified 685 products based on past Indian export performance and global import performance of various products. This workshop was organised by Federation of Indian Exporters Organisation (FIEO) and was also attended by Commerce Secretary, Ms. Rita Teaotia, OSD, Dr. Anup Wadhawan and DGFT, Alok Chaturvedi.