The Hindu Business Line : Services Export Promotion Council gets off the ground

THE Commerce Ministry has taken the first step towards operationalising the Services Export Promotion Council (SEPC) by appointing Mr L.B. Singhal as its Executive Director.

Mr Singhal is currently the Director-General of the Export Promotion Council for EoUs and SEZs and will hold the additional responsibility of ED at SEPC.

When contacted, Mr Singhal told Business Line that the SEPC would be registered as a society under the Societies Registration Act. The council would formulate policies and work out strategies to enhance exports of all major services.

"The SEPC would cover all major services including entertainment, health, tourism, education, hospital, consultancy, legal and accountancy services," he said.

The council would cover all the 160-odd services notified by the World Trade Organisation except that of computer software services and hotels, which have separate export promotion councils.

Since services account for about 50 per cent of the country's gross domestic product, an export promotion council for this sector was first proposed in the five-year Foreign Trade Policy 2004-09, announced in August last year.

In the annual supplement to the Foreign Trade Policy, announced on April 8, the Commerce Minister, Mr Kamal Nath, had said that an SEPC would be set up "very soon under the aegis of the Commerce Ministry."

The Commerce Minister had set up an inter-ministerial taskforce headed by the Director-General of Foreign Trade, Mr K.T. Chacko, to work out the modalities for setting up the SEPC including its scope of work and composition. The taskforce has submitted its report.

Meanwhile, a Parliamentary Standing Committee on Commerce has recommended that the Directorate-General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCI&S) should strive to compile data on export of services also.

In its report tabled in Parliament recently, the Committee highlighted that compilation of data on export of services would enable grant of help under the Assistance to States for Infrastructure Development for Exports (ASIDE) scheme on the basis of their performance in the export of services.

Currently, the data compiled by the DGCI&S do not capture services exports and only reports on foreign trade in goods.

The allocation of assistance under the ASIDE scheme was based on export of goods alone and export of services was not taken into account.

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