Declining exports: ComMin to hold exporters meet on Oct 7

New Delhi: Worried over continued decline in exports, the Commerce Ministry will hold a meeting of exporters on October 7 to discuss ways to contain the dip in the outbound shipments.

The meeting, to be chaired by Commerce Secretary Rita Teaotia, will be attended by several export promotion councils and Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO), an official said.

"Issues, which are expected to be discussed include cost of credit and ways to reduce transactions cost for exporters," the official added.

FIEO said that cost of credit is very high for exporters and it is impacting India's exports.

"We will raise this issue in the meeting. We will also raise several matters related to transactions cost. The government should soon take decision on resuming the interest subsidy scheme," FIEO Director General & CEO Ajay Sahai said.

He said that earlier single application was allowed to be filed for all EDI (electronic data interchange) ports in the country for claiming promotional benefits but now exporters have to file separate applications and such steps are pushing up transaction cost, he said.

In August, India's exports contracted for the ninth month in a row, dipping 20.66 percent to USD 21.26 billion, due to steep decline in engineering and petroleum shipments.

In all, 23 out of 30 sectors closely monitored by the Commerce Ministry were in the negative zone last month.

During the month, top two sectors, engineering and petroleum products, contracted by 29 percent and 47.88 percent, respectively.

The continuous decline in exports is expected to impact jobs and put pressure on the current account deficit.

India aims to take exports of goods and services to USD 900 billion by 2020 and raise the country's share in world exports to 3.5 percent from 2 percent, at present.

The exports during the past four financial years have been hovering at around USD 300 billion.