Strategy Paper On Export May Miss Deadline.

The strategy paper on doubling India’s exports to $450 billion in next three years may miss the March 31 deadline, as it is likely to get delayed by a month.

“The stakeholders’ response was initially weak, but it picked up in third week of March and there have been a huge list of suggestions, from industry organisations to individuals. These have now been sent to commerce ministry and its suggestions would form part of the final strategy paper. Hence, this delay,” a senior commerce ministry official told Financial Chronicle on condition of anonymity.

Commerce minister Anand Sharma had released the draft strategy paper on February 23. “The final paper, outlining concrete measures was originally scheduled to be released by March 31. We will look forward to stakeholders’ response for a month and once the inputs are collated, it will be part of the foreign trade policy,” Sharma had said at that time.

India’s export has already grown at 29 per cent and is expected to be around $ 230 billion in 2010-11. The target is to double it to over $ 450 billion in next three years and the trust would be to move from traditional sectors to high-value engineering goods to increase the value of exports.

“We are waiting the final strategy paper on doubling India’s export as it is expected to reduce the enormous paper work at DGFT’s office and further bring down the transaction cost,” Ramu Deora, president of Federation of Indian Exports Organisation said.

According to the draft paper, there is a need to double India’s textile and agri exports by 2014 while triple exports of gems and jewellery, engineering goods, electronics goods and leather goods by 2013-14.

Exports of engineering goods needs to move up the value chain both in terms of domestic production and exports. Product diversification is required in exports of leather and textiles, as they are high employment generators and have high domestic value addition. Further, it is suggested to revitalise plantations, reduce control on agriculture exports and enhance food processing to boost exports.

Source : mydigitalfc.com