Indian Westerlies

Post Budget, every year, ministry of commerce/DGFT brings out a supplement to the existing Foreign Trade Policy (FTP). Depending on the circumstances, policy is fine-tuned to maximize exports, within given fiscal constraints. It's a typical optimization problem with the boundaries being set by the Budgetary allocations. Consultations between industries, traders, export promotion bodies, regional authorities of DGFT offices and other stake-holders are continuously on for this process. This year, commerce department has gone one step ahead by sending representatives across the country, to gather inputs from the stakeholders, for policymaking.   The blogger had an opportunity to participate (passively) in one such meet in Chennai, where a senior official from Commerce department came to gather the inputs. FIEO with the local DGFT officials, had organized the meet with exporters and industries. The venue was Le-Meridian and the lunch was good.  The inputs by most of the expor

Merchandise exports for the month of Feb 2013 finally showed an upward trend in both dollar and rupee terms. After a long time, we are seeing a turnaround, where the exports are growing. The PIB report , released today, says this: "Exports during February, 2013 were valued at US $ 26259.36 million (Rs. 141206.31 crore) which was 4.23 per cent higher in Dollar terms (13.99 per cent higher in Rupee terms) than the level of US $ 25194.42 million (Rs. 123873.66 crore) during February, 2012. Cumulative value of exports for the period April-February 2012 -13 was US $ 265946.37  million (Rs 1446626.70 crore) as against US $ 277124.56 million (Rs 1320835.99 crore) registering a  negative growth of 4.03 per cent in Dollar terms and growth of 9.52 per cent in Rupee terms over the same period last year." And for a change, imports have not grown faster than exports. They grew at a rate of around 2.65%, which is lesser than the 4.2% growth in exports as said above. This is just

ASIDE is an infrastructural development scheme run by Department of Commerce. It funds state governments to develop infrastructure that would assist in exports. The stated objective reads: The objective of the scheme is to involve the states in the export effort by providing assistance to the State Governments for creating appropriate infrastructure for the development and growth of exports . The criteria for approval of projects under this scheme reads: The proposals must show a direct linkage with the exports. The proposed investments should also not duplicate the efforts of any existing organization in the same field. We are talking about infrastructure development that would have 'direct' linkage to exports. You can read the scheme in greater detail here . The central government bears a financial burden of 80 to 90% and the rest is borne by respective state governments.  Over the last few years, a grand total of around 400 to 500 crores are being sp