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The Commerce and Industry Minister, Ms Nirmala Sitharaman, has said that the revised Foreign Trade Policy (FTP) would be released early to synchronise it with roll out of GST. The core focus of the revised FTP would be promoting exports from the SMEs and high employment potential sectors. She was chairing a meeting on the mid-term review of the Foreign Trade Policy 2015-20, jointly organised by the Department of Commerce and Research and Information System for the Developing Countries (RIS).
The Commerce Secretary, Ms Rita Teaotia, Chairman RIS, Mr Hardeep Singh Puri, and DGFT, Mr Ajay Bhalla, also participated in the discussions. The event was attended by trade policy experts from the industry, academia, research and government.
The major suggestions discussed during the deliberations related to promoting rupee trade, facilitating not only exports but also imports and reducing cost of credit. Participants recommended harnessing the high foreign exchange earnings and large employment generation potential of services related to the tourism, education and healthcare sectors. Such services fall under the WTO category of the Mode 2 Services, also called the ‘Consumption Abroad’ category. It was emphasised that promotion of Mode 2 in the services sector shall contribute to domestic economic development and job creation.
Concerns were also raised on issues relating to GST and its impact on export. The Minister said that the Department of Commerce has already taken up these issues with the Department of Revenue, and assured that it will again take them up with the Revenue Department for placing it before the GST Council to find a solution.
The critical role of the logistics sector in export competitiveness was also discussed, in addition to reducing the cost of credit in promoting exports, export basket diversification, strategy for promoting value-added exports, agriculture exports and services exports.
It may be noted that while announcing the five year FTP 2015-20 in April 2015, the Commerce and Industry Minister had announced that the policy would be reviewed on mid-term basis. The exercise was initiated by the Department of Commerce in January 2017. DGFT has held consultations with a cross-section of stakeholders—exporters, traders, export promotion councils, commodity boards, various Ministries of the Central government, state governments, foreign missions of India and industry bodies—in this regard.
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