FIEO demands creation of Export Development Fund in budget 2017-18
Jan 17, 2017: Commenting on the December 2016 trade data, President of Federation of Indian Export Organisation (FIEO), S C Ralhan said that exports for December, 2016 continued with its positive trend and touched the base of over $23 billion exhibiting a growth of 5.72 per cent during the month. The overall exports for the period April-December 2016-17 is also positive for the second time in a row showing a growth of 0.75 per cent during the period, the release stated.
Countries are supporting aggressive marketing to get limited orders available globally with slowdown in global trade. Government should create an Export Development Fund for aggressive marketing particularly for MSME by providing a corpus of about 0.5 per cent of previous year exports as the present support through marketing scheme is inadequate. He added, “We think our request for an Export Development Fund in the Union Budget is well timed. GST must ensure a system which does not affect the liquidity of exporters both of input tax for manufacturers and final product tax for merchant exporters. The interest equalisation scheme has been very effective in cutting the cost of credit and should be extended to merchant exporters in this budget.”
FIEO Chief further added that the growth across sectors in 18 out of 30 major product groups, have not only been positive in December but sectors especially iron ore have continued to show an overwhelming growth of well over 800 per cent. Other major sectors like jute manufacturing, oil meals, oil seeds, coffee, marine products, cashew, engineering goods, organic and inorganic chemicals, drugs and pharmaceuticals and gems and jewellery have also shown impressive growth contributing in a major way to the growth in exports during the month with few of them showing higher double digit growth for the first time in recent months. Ralhan reiterated that petroleum exports which has a major contribution in the exports basket has continued to grow with a growth of well over eight per cent.
FIEO President added that global sentiments have started showing positive signs and US Fed rate hike and demonetisation have very limited impact on exports. The labour intensive sectors like gems and jewellery, handicraft, marine and engineering have shown impressive growth. Ralhan said that looking at the continuous positive trend of growth in exports, we are on our course to achieve exports of about $270-280 billion during the current fiscal. The focus in such challenging times should be on marketing with proactive support from the government.
