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| Govt mulling over steps to boost exports |
| Press Trust of India / New Delhi Jul 28, 2010, 21:21 IST |
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The government today said that it is mulling over steps to give a further push to exports, which have grown by over 32 per cent in the first quarter of the current fiscal.
The Commerce Ministry has completed three-day consultations with exporter bodies such as FIEO and business chambers in the wake of the Prime Ministry's Economic Advisory Council (PMEAC) revising the export target to $216 billion for 2010-11.
Earlier, the ministry had fixed the export target at $200 billion on top of $182 billion in 2009-10 (the government has since revised the exports for the previous fiscal from $176.6 billion to $182 billion).
"Our consultations with chambers and exports councils have been completed. Now we will have in-house exercises and see what is required to be done," Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma told reporters after the review meeting.
India's exports, which were impacted by the global demand slowdown, started rising from November 2009 on back of improved demand in the traditional markets of US and EU.
In the first three months, exports stood at $50.8 billion -- showing a growth of 32.2 per cent over the year-ago period.
Sharma said the government may provide additional fiscal benefits to exporters, besides shuffling existing sops to provide more help to lagging sectors.
"We will see if we have to do some minor changes (in fiscal sops), tweaking we call it, and if we have to make some additions we will look at that," he said.
He said that several sectors, such as textiles and handicrafts, continue to lag behind and the government may provide some additional support to these labour-intensive sectors.
The exporters get sops such as the focus product/market scheme, VKGUY and DEPB.
Besides other demands, exporters want an extension of the DEPB scheme, under which they will get duty benefits on import of capital goods. The scheme will expire on December 31.
When asked if the government would consider the extension during review of export policies, Sharma said, "Yes, it will be (considered)."
Other issues, including availability of credit to exporters, also came up for discussions during the meeting.
Exports started going up from November last year, after contracting for 13 months in a row since October 2008.
Though exports went up by 30.4 per cent in June this year over the year-ago period, they still fell short of matching the pre-financial scenario.
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