Government to facilitate states in bid to boost exports

Forms trade facilitation panel under commerce & industry minister Nirmala Sitharaman

In an effort to boost the performance of country’s exports, the Centre has decided to rope in the states by facilitating them to make exporting activity as a priority area.

To achieve this objective the government has even formed a trade facilitation committee under the chairmanship of Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, which would have secretaries from the states as well as key ministries as members of the body.

According to sources, commerce secretary Rita Teotia would be meeting representatives from the state governments tomorrow to understand their local problems and hindrances that come in their way while exporting their produce.

The meeting with these state governments would pave the way for the committee to achieve three key goals such as infrastructure development, easing regulatory environment and addressing concerns related to local taxes and their refund. The government would also push those states that do not have a stipulated export policy to devise their own state trade policy of sorts under the broad framework of the Foreign Trade Policy (FTP) 2015-2020. The ministry of commerce and industry is also likely to ask each state government to work out a roadmap of their export strategy.

The FTP, launched in April, consolidated all the previous export incentive schemes for merchandise exports even as it introduced a two-pronged strategy by introducing new schemes — Merchandise Exports from India Scheme (MEIS) and Services Exports from India Scheme (SEIS).

The rates of rewards under MEIS now range from two to five per cent from two to seven per cent earlier. On the other hand, under SEIS these will be from three to five per cent from five to 10 per cent earlier.

“Involving the states into the country’s export strategy is the need of the hour as hardly any state, barring a few, is serious about exports. Very few have their own export policy. States’ involvement will help in boosting exports and they have to be sensitised of the fact that exports should be one of their priority areas,” said SC Ralhan, president, Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO).

Merchandise exports from India have been declining continuously for the last six months. In May exports contracted 20.19 per cent to $22.34 billion compared to $28 billion last year. Total exports in the first two months of the present financial year  plummeted 17.21 per cent to $44.40 billion compared to $53.63 billion last financial year.