Cabinet approves financial support for project exports

The union cabinet Wednesday approved financial support to the National Export Insurance Account (NEIA) for overseas project exports by increasing the authorised corpus of the NEIA Trust to Rs.4,000 crore with the risk underwriting capacity up to 20 times the actual corpus.

The cabinet meeting was chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

An official release said the proposal will increase the capacity of the NEIA Trust to underwrite more large size projects "in difficult countries with reasonably significant Indian content".

It also said "project exports" would lead to sustained export earning income and help in creation of jobs for foreign exchange earnings.

"Budgetary support to NEIA has been Rs.956 crore. This will be augmented through further budget support," the release said.

The NEIA was set up in 2006 as a public trust by the commerce and industry ministry to promote project exports from India.

The NEIA also supports project exports which have long credit period for repayment and which are beyond the underwriting capacity of the Export Credit Guarantee Corporation (ECGC).

Project Exports, in essence, connotes setting up of projects overseas as construction and/or engineering projects.

It also involves the export of engineering consultancy or other engineering services/goods complement as desired by the project owner.