Too Ambitious

The export target of 20 per cent for 1998-99 put out by commerce minsiter Ramkrishna Hegde has been dubbed as over-optimistic by some senior ministry officials and export organisations.

According to them a more realistic assessment would peg the export target at 10-15 per cent, over the 1997-98 receivables estimated to aggregate $34 billion.

Imports are expected to total $40.5 billion, resulting in a trade deficit of $6.5 billion in 1997-98, officials said. Initially, the ministry had anticipated imports to touch $42 billion.

However, with international crude oil prices touchning historic lows in 1997-98, the government was able to slash the oil import bill by $1.5 billion.

Officials also said that the sectoral export performance in 1997-98 was disturbing. According to them, when Chinese textile exports saw an increase of 25 per cent, Indian exports rose by a mere 2.5 per cent in the same period.

According to Hegde, setting targets had become meaningless in the wake of the poor export performance in the last two years. In 1997-98, export growth was only 2.5-3 per cent as compared to the target of 18 per cent. In the previous year, it was no different, and the actual export growth worked out to 4 per cent as compared to the target of 20 per cent.