Trade in, trade up..! Suresh Prabhu chairs the Board of Trade meeting !

New Delhi, February 16: “India’s exports have faced a very challenging period in recent years, on account of developments arising from the global financial crisis of 2008-09, which accentuated after 2013-14, when the world economy, including China experienced a major trade slowdown”, said Dr Anup Wadhwan while addressing the intellectuals at the meeting of Board of Trade (BOT), chaired by Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu on Friday at national capital.

  

The meeting was also attended by Commerce Secretary, Secretary DPIIT, DGFT, Secretaries and other senior officials of key line ministries including, Finance and Agriculture, all major trade and industry bodies, Export Promotion Councils and industrialists. On this occasion, Prabhu launched a new online ‘Anytime-Anywhere’ export awareness course to train, mentor and hand-hold potential exporters so as to help them to tap international trade opportunities.

In another e-initiative, Commerce Minister also launched a Mobile App of DGFT. “Exporters can now log their grievances, apply for various licenses, view their status using this app, besides accessing information about latest trade notices, circulars, Foreign Trade Policy and trade fairs”, he said in his address.

“Thus, after achieving a turnaround from the initial shock and reaching a peak export figure of US$ 314.4 billion in 2013-14, our 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”, Wadhwan added further.

However, since then concerted efforts through improved logistics, trade facilitation, increased digitization to reduce human interface and increase transparency, implementation of GST, capacity building through skilling, the government has been able to arrest the downturn affecting India.

He, signing off, highlighted the detailed export promotion strategy, which has been prepared by 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.