Matchmaker Plays Key Role In Promoting Exports To Us

Shyam Agrawal, resident director here of the India Trade Promotion Organisation (ITPO), is helping India push more aggressively to increase exports and foreign trade.

My role here is that of a matchmaker, Agrawal said, referring to his job in bringing together trading partners. He is a business ambassador who influences people, wins business, hard-sells India and its bountiful array of products, organises trade fairs that are the hallmark of the ITPO and generally paves the road for fruitful and long-lasting trade.

ITPO is an Indian government organisation, primarily promoting exports. Agrawal is responsible for promoting exports from India to the North American region, which is by far Indias single largest trading partner.

 

However, Agrawal, who assumed his position in New York in August 1996, does considerably more than just push for trade. He is an international economist and has been a research banker and an adviser on foreign trade to the government of Mauritius.

Even though the US is Indias largest trading partner, product concentration is high in this market, he said. According to him, diversification of the countrys export basket is essential for expanding and intensifying trade efforts.

Currently, textiles, including ready-made garments and fabrics, account for over 50 per cent of Indias exports to the US. The other major products in Indias exports basket are gems and jewellery, handicrafts, leather and leather products, cashews and marine products.

Agrawal says, Realising the product concentration, ITPO has identified new products that have potential that can vastly add to the exports. Some of these products are builders hardware, auto parts, bicycles and bicycle parts, leather products and shoes.

While Indian garment exporters continue to be gloomy in their outlook in the face of competition from other Asian players, Agrawal thinks their fears are misplaced. He concedes that garment manufacturers are squeezed by smaller margins, but points out that the market for other textiles is growing rapidly.

Home textiles and furnishings have attained impressive growth, he points out. In the last two years, Indias share of the USs home textiles imports has increased from 5.9 per cent to 7.6 per cent in 1996, he says. Our analysis indicates that the uptrend continues, he adds.

He said the American response to ITPOs Tex-Styles exhibition at New Delhis Pragati Maidan, which ended yesterday, has been overwhelming.

Last year, participants in the exhibition reported business worth $80 billion and the fair attracted buyers from 70 countries. From the US alone, there were 300 buyers. Additionally, it has attracted a number of designers and, according to Agrawal, Calvin Klein was among those who showed great interest. Designer firms such as AJW, By The Yard, and Roth Fabrics attended the fair and a number of industry journals covered it, he says.

India still has a lot of competitive advantages in its textile industry, he says, discounting fears of India losing ground to other countries, notably China, once quantitative quotas for textiles are eliminated.

The ITPO is a post-liberalisation era organisation. It was formed in 1992 by merging the Trade Fair Authority of India and the Trade Development Authority of India. Since then, it has assumed a role of providing critical direction to the countrys foreign trade. It does not itself engage in trade and its funds come primarily from the trade fairs that it organises. Any shortfall is covered by the Indian government. Our role is to identify newer sectors of potential, and nurture them to a competitive level, Agrawal explains. We then withdraw.

Agrawal comes from Kurukshetra in Haryana and was in his earlier years a teacher of economics at colleges in Kurukshetra University.

His first foray in the corporate sector was as a research banker at the Bank of Baroda.

In 1996 he was named resident director of the New York office. The office here was opened in 1974 under the aegis of the Trade Development Authority of India. The ITPO now has five overseas offices - New York, Frankfurt (Germany), Dubai (United Arab Emirates), Tokyo (Japan), and Moscow (Russia).

Agrawal is now preparing for two other fairs Leatherland: India International Leather Fair 98 in Chennai from February 5 to 9 and the International Leather Goods Fair in Calcutta from March 7 to 9.