Export Incentives Likely To Be Enhanced

The government is taking steps to improve the various export incentive schemes in a transparent framework to eliminate possibilities of misuse, commerce minister B B Ramaiah said here yesterday. The issue of simplification and rationalisation of the export incentive schemes will be discussed threadbare at the Board of Trade (BoT) meeting today, he told the news agency.

Refusing to go into the specifics regarding misuse and mis-interpretation of the various schemes, the minister said there were many complaints about schemes like export promotion capital goods (EPCG) and duty drawbacks and added that there was a need to streamline the schemes to ensure transparency and result-orientation.

 

We will come out with some novel scheme to give a fillip to exports. At the same time we will go in for removal of licensing and discretionary controls for which I have to convince other departments, he said adding representatives of the ministries of finance, industry, textiles, surface transport besides the RBI would attend the BoT meet today.

Conceding that the pace of trade liberalisation and rationalisation had not been as fast as desired, Ramaiah said while attributing this to inter-ministerial bureaucratic wrangles.

We are moving in the right direction despite being a 13-party coalition and our objective is export promotion in a policy environment of export-friendliness, he said.

Referring to the forthcoming exim policy to be effective from April 1, Ramaiah said the emphasis would be on simplification and reduction of procedural complexities so as to reduce documentary requirements and administrative intervention in export and import transactions.

Emphasising that the new policy would also stress on gradual elimination of quantitative restrictions on exports and imports, the minister said we are interacting with all the concerned ministries to take out as many items as possible from quantitative restrictions.

Ramaiah, however, refused to commit on whether India would be in a position to give a schedule for phasing out all quantitative restrictions on imports at the next meeting of the World Trade Organisation sub-committee scheduled in June. India has over 3000 items under the restricted list of imports and about 900 items are listed for special import license scheme.

The availability of export credit amidst the seemingly easy liquidity situation is also likely to be discussed at the meeting at which representatives of exporters are expected to raise the issues of passbook scheme and problems emanating from non-implementation of various schemes by the customs department.