Starting Import Business Introduction.
Introduction
Starting an import business is a goal of more than thousands of merchants and businessman. Like an export business, import business is also very profitable business, if an importer proceeds with the right strategies. However, the long term success and profitability of an import business greatly depends on the importer’s knowledge and understanding about the international market and foreign market analysis.
Today, importing goods from abroad has becomes a big business. Everything from beverages to cars--and a staggering list of other products that one might have never imagined has now become the part of the global import. Millions of products are bought, sold, represented and distributed somewhere in the world on a daily basis.
Reasons for Import
There are number of supporting reasons why import business and services is growing at such a fast rate:-
Availability: An individual or business man or an importer needs to import because there are certain things that he can’t grow or manufacture in his home country. For example Bananas in Alaska, Mahogany Lumber in Maine and Ball Park franks in France.
Cachet: A lot of things, like caviar and champagne, pack more cachet, more of an "image," if they're imported rather than home-grown. Think Scandinavian furniture, German beer, French perfume, Egyptian cotton. It all seems classier when it comes from distant place.
Price: Price factor is also an important reason for import of products. Some products are cheaper when imported from foreign country. For example Korean toys, Taiwanese electronics and Mexican clothing, to rattle off a few, can often be manufactured or assembled in foreign factories for far less money than if they were made on the domestic country.
Import in India
The rising middle income groups of consumers in India and their increasing levels on expenditure on various products has resulted a faster rising demand of the Indian import business. Major imports of India include cereals, edible oils, machineries, fertilizers and petroleum products. Total import from India estimated to be around US$187.9 billion. India is also a bulk importer of edible oil, sugar, pulp and paper, newsprint, crude rubber and Iron and steel.
Import Regulatory Body
In India, all the activities related to import are handled by the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), a government organisation that also controls the export business in India. DGFT and all its regional offices work under the Ministry Commerce and Industries, Department of Commerce, Government of India. All the procedure and policies in matter related to the import is announced by the DGFT through its notification, appendices and forms.
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