India’s exports rose by 9.8%, in financial year 2017-18, which is the highest rate of growth in six years. This positive growth in exports has taken place at a time when there is a lot of negative headwinds globally. This was stated by Union Minister of Commerce & Industry and Civil Aviation, Suresh Prabhu, at the Export Summit 2018 organised by Confederation of Indian Industry in New Delhi today. The Minister further stated that Commerce Ministry is working on a strategy to revitalize India’s exports and is working with key exporting ministries to formulate sectoral, commodity and territory specific export strategy. Meetings with concerned ministries have already been held where differentministries and stakeholders have been consulted after which a matrix of specific action points have been prepared sector wise, commodity wise and territory wise.

Suresh Prabhu further stated that he is personally monitoring the progress and regular meetings are beingheld withsectoral ministries,export promotion councils and exporters.Certain issues which were affecting growth of exports have been specifically taken up with Department of Revenue and Ministry of Environment.

The Commerce Minister also said that the soon to be unveiled agri export policy will give a major boost to the agricultural sector and will pave the way for Indian farmer’s income to be doubled.India produces 600 MT of agricultural produce and has the capacity to export the excess productiontothe world.Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), AlokVardhanChaturvedi, spoke about the recent initiatives taken by the Commerce Ministry to smoothen procedures for exporters. Most procedures are now online and hard copy of documents are not required to be submitted. DGFT is also planning to have online export related courses to inform, train and facilitate first time exporters. The DGFT is also in the process of overhauling the IT network of the DGFTso thatthere is no wastage of time for online submission of documents.