Parl panel says ITPO losing focus on trade & promotion activities

A parliamentary panel has rapped the commerce department for overlapping mandates of India Trade Promotion Organisation (ITPO), export promotion council and chambers of commerce which has resulted in ITPO losing grip over its primary responsibility to promote trade.  ITPO is a premier trade agency of the government.

The Parliament's standing committee on commerce had made this observation in its earlier report in February as well. 

On that report, the department had replied that ITPO's primary emphasis is on targeting the SME sector. The body, it said would examine the ways of providing services to the SME sector in terms of disseminating live trade enquiries, inviting overseas trade delegations to visit SME units in India and organizing various kinds of promotion activities. 

However, the committee, headed by BJP Rajya Sabha MP Chandan Mitra, in its latest report tabled in Parliament on Monday, found the Department's reply as merely contemplative towards promoting the foreign trade avenues of SME sector. 

"None of the contemplated measures has been implemented on ground," the committee said. 

Moreover, even the action plan, proposed by the Department, does not reflect any innovation and it merely promises about bringing improvement in the existing processes. 

The committee said, it would have appreciated if the Department had furnished information on action taken on ground to reinvigorate and reinvent ITPO to carry out its mandate of trade promotion in a fruitful manner and position itself as a crucial player in India's export promotion framework. 

The committee in its earlier report had also pointed towards high rentals charged by ITPO for exhibitions in Pragati Maidan in New Delhi. ITPO owns and manages Pragati Maidan. 

To this the Department had said the rentals have been reduced by 5-25 per cent in some categories and for some halls. Besides, differential licensing fee has been introduced for the fair period and non-fair period. 

The panel in its latest report said it appreciated the "slight" reduction in license fee, and rentals. "The Committee nevertheless feels that the exercise to rationalize the license fee and rentals could have been more intensive so as to catapult Pragati Maidan as one of the most sought after venue on global exhibition map."

The committee said with the launch of Make in India campaign, it becomes all he more important for ITPO to offer its infrastructure on such rates and rentals that compete with those prevailing in internationally acclaimed exhibition centres.