Export Target Likely To Be Set At $40bn

The government is likely to set the export target for the year at $40 billion, commerce ministry officials said.

The target figure has been fixed after adding the individual targets set by various export promotion councils and commodity boards, the officials added.

The target is likely to be set against an export achievement of $33 billion in 1996-97. The target for 1996-97 was missed by $5 billion.

Commerce minister B B Ramaiah had earlier said that the target was likely to be set between $35 and $40 billion.

A $40 billion target is considered optimistic since it implies an export growth rate of over 20 per cent. The growth rate for 1996-97 was just over four per cent.

The ministry also plans to identify between 30 and 50 categories of items, where India has an advantage out of the 200 products traded globally, for additional thrust. According to a ministry analysis of world and Indian trade, India ranked fourth in 1970 out of eight Asian countries. This was down to the eighth position in 1994.

This is not the first time that an exercise has been undertaken to identify products for export thrust. The ministry had prepared a list of around 35 thrust export products earlier.

Subsequently in 1995, when finance minister P Chidambaram was in charge of the ministry, an exercise was launched to identify the top 15 markets and an equivalent number of products for the countrys export markets.

However, this has now been abandoned and an internal ministry note on medium-term strategy has again suggested identifying 30-50 thrust items.

Indias share in world exports of select goods - gems and jewelry, rice, coffee, fish preparations and chemical companies - has gone up, but in most other items her share has declined.