The country's export scenario presents an incipient sign of improvement, following successive months of accelerated decline, with the November exports registering a relatively robust 18.2 per cent growth at $13.2 billion ($11.2 billion) as compared with the corresponding month of 2008.
But, the mandarins in the Commerce Ministry and exporters are still reticent in not getting excited by a single month's show.
Exporters still moan about the manifestly slow pace of moves by the authorities in their interface with them to ensure transparency, accountability, procedural simplification and reduction in transaction costs which continue to cost them time and money.
In order to get a grasp of what the Ministry is contemplating to make life easier for exporters so that they remain focused on their core business, Business Line spoke to the Minister of State for Commerce and Industry, Mr Jyotiraditya M. Scindia.
Not one to get elated by the positive development, Mr Scindia minces no words when he concedes that “even as the export scene has definitely improved, the important thing is to examine its sustainability” in the months ahead, given the tepid state of the global economy and teething troubles in making forays into new and unconventional markets in other continents.
Excerpts from the interview
On the macro front: The last 12 months have indeed been very alarming for the entire world and the slowdown has affected every single country including India. Last year this time, exports were at a high of roughly about $15 billion but subsequently we were looking at decline in percentage of close to 39.2 per cent.
After that when we assumed office in June/July, in looking at the trends I was going to be satisfied only when two things that happened: (a) There is a reversal in terms of the nominal numbers turning positive month on month compared to last fiscal and (b) there is also positivity in terms of the percentage month-on-month compared with last year.
So both boundary conditions needed to happen on a sustainable basis for at least three to four months before we assume that we are out of the woods.
I am pleased to say that from a low of $11.4 billion in May (-39.2 per cent against May 2008), exports clocked a growth of 18.2 per cent in November for the first time this fiscal and that definitely is a silver lining.
But I want this to be a sustainable recovery both in terms of nominal numbers and in terms of percentage at least till fourth quarter of 2009-10 which is until March 31, 2010. Only then, can we say that it is largely sustainable.
The exercise to intervene in the primarily labour-intensive export segment is complete and the Government will look at promulgation of relief measures either by the middle or end of next month.
On his own initiatives: On the issue of the plantation sector, especially in tea there is no reason why India cannot have a dominant brand recall in the global market.
With that purpose, I have set up a committee to look at the branding of tea from an India brand point of view with stakeholders from producers of specialised tea, manufactures such as Hindustan Lever and Tata Tea and branding experts such as Mr Piyush CommunitizationCPande.
Two meetings of the committee were held and the third is slated for early January.
On the transaction cost front, we are steadfastly working on a vertical which is a portal called e-biz, looking at facilitating the setting up of business right from the Central till local level in terms of permission, taxes to be paid and licences that need to be taken for any entrepreneur who wants to set up business.
Second, is a horizontal portal called e-trade, putting together all stakeholders that are involved in exports of any goods from customs, DGFT, ports, airports, handling agents and looking at facilitating that value chain in terms of making it more transparent and much more accessible.
Third, is a committee I have set up for transaction cost.
We are looking at six or seven key industries such as textiles, automotives, leather and agro products, where we are first of all identifying the value chain from ex-factory to ports to zero in on redundancies and latencies in the value chain in terms of efficiencies; and then looking at global benchmarks against those efficiencies so that we can facilitate transaction and reduce its cost in two parameters viz., time and money.
We have taken on board all stakeholders from FICCI, CII, FIEO and export promotion councils, ports and airport handlers and we will be putting together our findings over a period of 3-4 months.
Source : Business Line