Com Min, states working on ways to boost exports: Com Secy

In a move aimed at boosting country's exports, the Commerce Ministry has started discussions with state governments to resolve the issues related to trade facilitation and ease of doing business, a top official said.
This is part of the Commerce Ministry's initiative to engage with states to promote India's overseas shipments.
"We are reaching to the state governments, sitting with them and their exporters to understand what are the main issues (they are facing). We recently had a meeting in Madhya Pradesh," Commerce Secretary Rita Teaotia told PTI.
She said the main objective was to understand the issues of the land-locked states in terms of their trade facilitation requirements.

"We will visit 4-5 more states. State representatives can come and meet us in the ministry also," she said, adding the Commerce Ministry delegation includes representatives from Container Corporation of India, Directorate General of Foreign Trade, Federation of Indian Export Organisations and Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA).
Teaotia said states have to play a major role in increasing India's exports.

"We have also put a tool in the hands of state governments. We have given them access to Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics data. It is a great tool for them to recognise what are there key exports and what are the trends," she added.

In a meeting with states representatives in July, the Commerce Ministry had discussed issues such as problems related with infrastructure and governance; local tax matters and its refund; and states' regulatory environment.
The Secretary said states are now keen to enhance exports that would boost employment opportunities besides it can help in earing foreign exchange and improve standard of living of people.
"It was overall development. So states are now very conscious about this (exports). They are also preparing their export policy," she added.
Further, she said the ministry is also looking at different clusters in the country.
"...Wherever there is a cluster of economic activity, what is that which we can provide in terms of common infrastructure like labs for testing," she said.

As part of efforts to improve its ranking on 'ease of doing business', India has reduced the number of mandatory documents required for import and export of goods to three in each case. India ranked 126th in 'Trading Across Borders' component of 'ease of doing business', out of 189 countries ranked by the World Bank in its 2015 Report.
Contracting for the eighth month in a row, India's exports were down 10.3 per cent in July to USD 23.13 billion, hit by global slowdown and dip in crude oil prices which impacted the value of petroleum products.