Hon’ble
Ministers and senior officials from the States and other Ministries welcome to
the second meeting of the Council for Trade Development and Promotion.
As you are
aware, the objective of this Council is to develop partnerships with the States
with the aim of boosting International Trade.
Last
January 8th we had a very constructive dialogue with the State Ministers
regarding measures for creating and augmenting an enabling environment in the
States to boost International trade.
In my
invitation letter dated 31st Oct, I had annexed the status and
action taken on the various issues raised by you in the first meeting of this
council in last January
Though, since
last January we have managed to contain our trade deficit due to controls on
imports, there is an immediate need to synergize our efforts and jointly take
appropriate steps to boost India’s exports – which is the only sustainable way
in today’s international trade environment
As you
already know, there is a slowdown in world economy which has resulted in
decrease in some of India’s traditional exports.
We would
welcome your suggestions on steps required to improve the export
competitiveness of our products and on how can we partner in the adoption of
such measures to create an environment conducive for exports.
I exhort
the Members to use this platform to articulate their perspective on the Trade
Policy and work jointly with us to address impediments to trade and
Infrastructure gaps which adversely affect India’s exports.
One such
area which requires immediate intervention is that of facilities for testing,
certification, trace-back, packaging and labelling.
As some of
you may have seen on the Indian trade portal, a hundred to hundred and fifty SPS
notifications and a similar number of TBT notifications are being issued by WTO
member countries each month. Around 50% to 60% of these measures have the
potential to impact our trade.
There
Sector Specific needs can broadly be categorised into interventions required
for agri and marine products, for forest produce and for industrial products.
I request
the States to enhance their co-operation with Central Agencies for setting up
common facilities like testing labs, training institutes as well as packaging
and storage support to industry.
In the last
meeting I had requested the States to consider higher allocation of resources
for export infrastructure from their increased devolution of funds to which I
expected that at least the ongoing ASIDE projects would be completed by the
States from their resources. I am still awaiting an affirmative action on this
from the States.
However,
since almost all the states had expressed their wish for a central scheme which
supports export infrastructure, we have acted on your suggestion and are trying
to formulate a scheme which could provide financial support and supplement your
efforts to create export infrastructure.
I hope we
can soon succeed in achieving a consensus for the roll out of this scheme,
which is very aptly titled as TIES or Trade Infrastructure for Export Scheme.
This would surely strengthen our TIES with the States
States have
also been requested to develop their Export strategy aligned with the National
Policy trade. So far seventeen States have prepared their export strategy. I
request the balance States to kindly expedite their export strategies.
Also Export
Commissioners have been designated by twenty eight states. The remaining States
may kindle expedite. I would request the States to use these export
commissioners as focal points for institutionalised interactions with the
Exporters from the State.
I would
also like to draw the attention of the States towards our services exports
where we not only have a steady trade surplus but also a lot of untapped
potential.
Our
services trade surplus offsets our merchandise trade deficit to an extent and along
with overseas remittances, keeps our current account deficit in check.
While IT
and IT enabled services have an overwhelming predominance in our services
exports, these are largely restricted to the US and EU markets and are
therefore vulnerable to any changes imposed by these two trading blocks.
There is
thus a need to diversify our services exports basket by enabling more sectors and
to breach more markets.
Other areas
like Medical tourism, nursing and healthcare, education, Audio-visual media also
afford an excellent potential which can be harnessed.
For this, we
need to develop the right competencies like language skills for the East and
North East Asian markets.
I would
like to take this opportunity to exhort the State Governments to develop and
pursue appropriate export strategies in line with national Foreign Trade Policy
and we would be happy to associate in such efforts.
In
conclusion, I would also like to reiterate my request to all the States to
consider organizing bimonthly meetings with the exporters in their States to
sort out their infrastructure and tax related issues which would go a long way
in improving our trade competitiveness.
***
MJPS
