A meeting with export promotion councils and other key exporters was held in New Delhi to discuss various issues being faced by exporters and examine ways by which India’s merchandise exports may reach USD 325 billion by March 2019.The meeting was chaired by Secretary, Department of Commerce, Dr. Anup Wadhawan.

India recorded growth of 13.31 per cent in overall exports (Merchandise and Services combined) in 2017-18  over the same period last year. Overall exports stood at USD 498.61 billion in 2017-18 of which USD 303.53 billion was from merchandise exports.

After achieving a turnaround from the initial shock and reaching a peak export figure of USD 314.4 billion in 2013-14, India’s exports came under immense pressure again in the post 2013-14 period due to accentuation of the global economic and financial crisis in the second phase when countries like China also got adversely affected. However, since then concerted efforts through improved logistics, trade facilitation, increased digitization to reduce human interface and increase transparency, implementation of GST and capacity building through skilling the Government has been able to arrest the downturn affecting India.

As a result, our merchandise exports have been growing since 2016-17 for almost three years and are likely to reach a new peak in 2018-19.

In the period April to Dec 2018 in FY2018-19, merchandise exports have grown by about 10% over the same period in the previous financial year.

This has been made possible by a detailed export promotion strategy, which has been prepared by the Department of Commerce and is under implementation in consultation with and with the support of wide-ranging stakeholders, including Export Promotion Councils, exporters and financial institutions.

Export promotion strategy advances trade facilitation and digitisation to drive merchandise export growth and stakeholder collaboration. A government convening of export promotion councils and exporters advanced an export promotion strategy deploying logistics improvement, trade facilitation, increased digitisation to reduce human interface, implementation of the Goods and Services Tax, and capacity building through skilling, with stakeholder consultation and engagement of financial institutions identified as central mechanisms to boost merchandise export performance.