India is unlikely to maintain 21 per cent export growth this fiscal and may find it difficult to meet overseas shipment target against the backdrop of continuing Euro Zone debt crisis, the Federation of Indian Export Organisation has said.

The country’s shipments this year may not even touch $350 billion and the Government’s target of $500 billion by 2014-15 too looks impossible because of the present global challenges, the FIEO President, Mr M. Rafeeq Ahmed, said.

He said India’s exports to Latin America and Africa are also facing difficulty due to logistics problem.

“The outlook for the current fiscal looks bleak, a growth of even 15-16 per cent would be very difficult to achieve with slowdown in world demand owing to Euro crisis and decrease in trade exports to Latin America and Africa,” Mr Ahmed told PTI.

The country’s merchandise exports grew 21 per cent year-on-year in 2011-12 to $303.7 billion.

Mr Ahmed said India’s share of exports to Latin America and Africa has gone down to 12 per cent recently owing to difficulty in logistics, including shipping of commodities to these regions.

“The export growth will not be more than five-six per cent in the first six months of the current fiscal,” he said, adding that ASEAN and Asian markets remain the only hope for India, which continue to be a major destination of the country’s exports.

Export credit

He added that during such difficult times, there is an urgent need for an affordable export credit at internationally comparable interest rates to the exporters.

The cost of credit now exceeds 12 per cent whereas benchmark rates in most countries are in the range of 2-6 per cent, Mr Ahmed said, adding that there is also a need to focus on MSME exporters who are facing problems due to fluctuation in the rupee value.

The MSME sector contributes about 40 per cent to the country’s exports.

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