Will ease out few more things to boost exports: Nirmala Sitharaman

She added that the government has not yet decided on fixing the minimum import price on certain steel products

The Commerce Ministry today said it will work with various departments including environment, textiles finance to boost exports and ease out few more things to improve ease of doing business in the country.

Several issues including the impact of India-Asean free trade agreement on the country's exports were raised by the 12 export promotion councils (EPCs) during a meeting with Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

After the meeting, the minister said: "The Commerce Ministry will follow up with environment, textiles, customs and finance for easing out of few more things related to export promotion so that there is an ease of doing business from the exporters point of view."

She said other issues which were flagged include non-tariff barriers of other countries, currency volatility, special economic zones, problems in dealing with customs authorities and service tax.

"...Many of the issues which are enablers to better exports have been identified, issues which may have a bearing on the forthcoming Budget were also raised," she told reporters here after over two-hour long meeting with the EPCs.

Concerns were raised by the exporters about the effect that the Asean FTA is having on our exports because many of the sectors feel that products belong to their sectors are coming in at zero duty whereas similar exports are unable to be made from India, the minister added.

Asean is a ten country block of South East Asian nations.

The minister also added that the government has not yet decided on fixing the minimum import price on certain steel products.

Engineering Export Promotion Council Chairman T S Bhasin said that the government needs to take steps to boost exports.

"We talked about long term solutions. We have raised issues related to FTAs which are impacting our exports," he said adding "the government should think of discussing FTAs with regions like Africa, Latin America and CIS countries".

The Commerce Ministry is holding stakeholder consultations to discuss ways to boost exports, which are in negative zone since December 2014.

India's exports contracted for the 13th month in a row, dipping about 15% in December to $22.2 billion due to steep decline in engineering and petroleum shipments.

The cumulative exports during the April-December period declined by 18.06% to $196.6 billion.

Outbound shipments of as many as 15 key sectors, including petroleum, engineering and leather, dipped last month.