India’s overall exports (merchandise and services) have increased since 2016-17. During the current period 2018-19 (Apr-Sept), India’s overall exports registered a positive growth of 17.01% as compared to the corresponding period of previous year. The details of India’s overall exports for last three years and the current year are as follows:

Years	Value of Exports (US$ billion)	% Change
2015-16	416.60	--
2016-17	440.05	5.63
2017-18	498.63	13.31
2017-18 (Apr-Sept)	226.08	--
2018-19 (Apr-Sept)*	264.54	17.01

Source: DGCI&S, Kolkata (*Provisional) & RBI

In order to boost India’s exports, the Government has taken several measures through new Foreign Trade Policy 2015-20 launched on 1^st April 2015, its mid-term review released on December 5, 2017 and other policy measures taken from time to time. The key measures include:

• FTP 2015-20 provides a framework for increasing exports of goods and services as well as generation of employment and increasing value addition in the country, in line with the Make in India, Digital India, Skill India, Start-up India and Ease of doing business initiatives.
• The main policy objective is to enable India to respond to the challenges of the external environment keeping in view the rapidly evolving international trading architecture and make trade a major contributor to the country’s economic growth and development.
• The policy provides the framework for promotion of exports through schemes of incentives on exports and duty remission/exemption on inputs for export production.
• The policy introduces two new schemes, namely ‘Merchandise Exports from India Scheme (MEIS)’ for improving export of specified goods by merging five earlier schemes for better coherence and ‘Services Exports from India Scheme (SEIS)’ for increasing exports of notified services. Duty credit scrips issued under MEIS and SEIS and the goods imported against these scrips are fully transferable. The MEIS scheme now covers 8057 tariff lines at 8-digit level to all countries.
• The policy includes measures to nudge procurement of capital goods from indigenous manufacturers under the EPCG scheme by reducing specific export obligation from 90 percent to 75 percent of the normal export obligation.
• The policy provides issue of Advance Authorisation to allow duty free import of inputs, which is physically incorporated in export product within a specified timeline.
• Interest Equalization Scheme on pre and post shipment rupee export credit has been introduced from 1.4.2015 to help exporters in accessing credit at reduced rates.
• Niryat Bandhu Scheme has been galvanised and repositioned to achieve the objectives of ‘Skill India’ and trade promotion and awareness.
• Trade facilitation and enhancing the ease of doing business measures have been taken with special focus on moving towards paperless working. The Government has launched a Single Window Interface for Facilitating Trade (SWIFT) clearances project with effect from 1^st April, 2016. The scheme enables the importers and exporters to file a common electronic Integrated Declaration on the Indian Customs Electronic Commerce/Electronic Data Interchange (EC/EDI) Gateway i.e. ICEGATE portal. India also ratified the WTO Agreement on Trade Facilitation (TFA) in April 2016 for enhancing trade facilitation.
• A new scheme called Trade Infrastructure for Export Scheme (TIES) has been launched from 1^st April 2017 to address the export infrastructure gaps in the country.
• The Mid-term Review of Foreign Trade Policy 2015-20 launched on 5^th December 2017 provides more incentives for export promotion.

Due to the above mentioned steps taken by the Government, there has been a revival of exports and the results achieved there from are reflected in para (a) and (b) above.

This information was given by the Minister of State of Commerce and Industry, C. R. Chaudhary, in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha today.

Export promotion framework under the Foreign Trade Policy expands transferable incentive schemes and trade facilitation to boost exports. The Foreign Trade Policy establishes a comprehensive export promotion framework employing transferable incentive instruments (MEIS and SEIS), duty remission and Advance Authorisation for duty free inputs, modified EPCG obligations to favor domestic capital goods procurement, an Interest Equalisation Scheme to reduce export credit costs, capacity building via Niryat Bandhu, and trade facilitation and infrastructure measures (SWIFT, WTO TFA ratification, TIES); a mid term review added further incentives to align export policy with national economic initiatives.