The Hindu Business Line : Sectoral export target meeting advanced to July 27

Encouraged by the salutary trends in the country's exports during the first quarter of the current fiscal, the Commerce and Industry Minister, Mr Kamal Nath, has advanced the convening of sectoral export target meeting, which is scheduled to take place on July 27 here.

Sources in the Government told Business Line here that the sectoral export target meeting normally takes place almost after the first half of the fiscal year but this time round, it was decided to advance it in the beginning of the second quarter itself to cash in on the positive trends noticeable during the first quarter exports.

They said that as the revised export figure for the last fiscal has been estimated at close to $103 billion, the earlier target fixed for the current fiscal at 16 per cent over and above the provisional trade data of $101 billion in 2005-06 needs to be revised.

But in any case, they said that during the first quarter of the current fiscal, the export growth has clocked a hefty 32.40 per cent growth over and above the comparable quarter of 2005-06, necessitating a revision in export target.

Hence, in the proposed meeting, the chiefs of various export promotion councils and commodity boards would spell out the level of performance they would scale up, as the year gets under way in the light of the achievement during the first quarter.

The positive growth in exports during the first quarter cuts across products and commodities, covering engineering, petroleum products, basic chemicals, electronic goods, cotton yarn/fabrics/made-ups, carpets, mineral, spices, coffee and tobacco.

Review meeting

The sources said the review meeting to fix the revised target for individual commodity would also discuss the various policy measures unveiled in the modifications to the annual foreign trade policy so that the operational problems plaguing the exporters could be addressed and solutions found to mitigate the ground-level grievances of the exporters.

They said that as the country's exports have been consistently posting a higher growth during the last three years with the trend during the current fiscal highly encouraging, every effort would be made to ensure that the exporters put in their best by ensuring that the glitches and other constraints are surmounted.

They said that textile exports, which suffered setback in the recent past, have been doing well during the first quarter, though in June, the raw data on trends in exports showed a minor decline. The sources maintained that the Government is keen on providing a real leg-up to the garment industry, which has been doing exceptionally well after the dismantling of the quota regime.

They clarified that the Government is committed to ensuring that the country's textile export target as spelt out in the National Textile Policy-2000 (NTxP 2000) was $50 billion by 2012 with readymade garment exports alone accounting for 50 per cent and the figure of $40 billion textile export target being touted elsewhere is the industry's target made by Crisis for Indian Cotton Mills Federation.