2020 Trade Goals
The Department of Commerce (DOC) is to make India a major player in the world trade by 2020 and assume a role of leadership in the international trade organizations commensurate with India’s growing importance.
DOC’s goal is to increase India’s exports of merchandise and services from the present level of US$465.9 billion (2013-14) to approximately US$900 billion by 2019-20 and raise India’s share in world exports from present 2% to 3.5%.
Strategic Initiatives and Priorities
• Diversification of export product basket
• Diversification into non-traditional markets and conclusion of ongoing Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations and initiating new FTAs
• Strengthening export related infrastructure
• Enhancing credit flows for exports at lower cost
• Reducing Transaction Costs
• Diversification of Services exports
• Building up a Brand Image of India
• Support to Plantation Sector
• Protection to sensitive domestic industries.
Major DOC Initiatives
A. New Foreign Trade Policy (2015-20)
• New Foreign Trade Policy (2015-20) was launched on 1st April, 2015 with a focus on supporting both merchandise and services exports and improving the ‘Ease of Doing Business’.
• It consolidated 5 different incentive schemes under the earlier policy for rewarding merchandise exports into a single scheme, namely the Merchandise Exports from India Scheme (MEIS).
The replaced schemes are: Focus Product Scheme (FPS), Focus
Market Scheme (FMS), Market Linked Focus Product Scrip (MLFPS), Vishesh
Krishi and Gram Udyog Yojna (VKGUY), Agri. Infrastructure Incentive Scrip.
• MEIS is a major export promotion scheme, seeks to promote export of notified goods manufactured/produced in India. At the time of introduction on April 1, 2015, MEIS covered 4914 tariff lines at 8 digits.
• Keeping in mind the global economic downturn and the adverse environment faced by exporters, it was expanded to include additional lines, and currently it covers 7914 lines, all with global coverage. Last expansion took place on Sep 22, 2016.
• The initial envisaged annual revenue foregone of Rs.18,000 Crore was thus enhanced to Rs.23500 Crore. MEIS incentives are available at 2, 3 and 5% of the FOB value of exports.
• Exporters were initially required to submit landing certificate as a proof of landing of consignment in the destination country for certain tariff lines for which global coverage was not provided. Obtaining landing certificate was an avoidable cost and exporters requested doing away with the Landing Certificate. The same was done away by extending global coverage to notified MEIS products that had only regional
coverage till then.
FTA outreach programmes
DOC’s ambitious FTA outreach programme to reach out to the exporters located in the 34 major export clusters/cities. The programmes
focused on:
• Training exporters to utilise the Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) – Taking inputs from exporters on FTAs under negotiations for example Regional comprehensive economic policy (RCEP).
• Promoting awareness about the contents of the www.indiantradeportal.in launched by DOC.
The State governments have been requested to develop their export strategy, appoint export commissioners, address infrastructure constraints restricting movement of goods, facilitate refund of VAT/ Octroi/State level cess, and address other issues relating to various clearances etc. and build capacity of new exporters, in order to promote exports.
Many States have done so.
Number of mandatory documents required for exports and imports have been reduced to 3 each for export and import. Earlier 7 documents were required for exports and 10 for imports.
• Online Inter-ministerial consultations have been initiated for SCOMET (Special Chemicals, Organisms, Materials, Equipment and Technologies) Items to reduce processing time of applications.
The exporters can also see the status of their electronic Bank realization certificates in almost real-time. The website is rich in content with all documents related to Foreign Trade Policy along with a responsive online grievance redressal system.
http://pibphoto.nic.in/documents/rlink/2016/nov/p2016111012.pdf — /fii-news.com
