Media sector has potential to touch $10 bn exports in 5 yrs: Official

A top commerce ministry official Thursday called for devising a concrete plan to increase exports from the media and entertainment (M&E) sector to USD 10 billion in the next five years.

"As one of the champion sectors supported by the Government of India, the Indian media and entertainment industry has a huge room for growth and should target a potential export growth of USD 10 billion from the current USD 1 billion," Sudhanshu Pandey, additional secretary, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, said.

He was addressing the 7th edition of the CII Big Picture Summit here.

"We need to reflect on how do we grow our export pie of the audio visual sector from USD 1 billion (from the total Indian exports of USD 200 billion) to USD 10 billion in the next few years," he said.

Currently, India is ranked fourth in the global audio-visual exports in the world.

Pandey also emphasised on the importance of intellectual property rights (IPRs), which is key to the growth of the M&E sector.

He cited the example of the US, where the IPR industry contributes USD 6 trillion (38 per cent of total GDP) to the economy.

The additional secretary said that the Indian M&E industry needs to drive IPR intensive industry, as this would safeguard against infringement of originality and creativity of the makers, thereby giving them the due credit.