India’s forex reserves comfortable for next 5-6 years, FTAs to generate surplus: Piyush Goyal

India's free trade agreements (FTA) will help generate surpluses and the country is "comfortable" for the next five-six years in its foreign exchange position, commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal said Wednesday. He also asked the Indian industry to do business with reliable partners in the supply chain.

Goyal exuded confidence on achieving $1 trillion each of goods and services exports by 2030.

"I have no doubt we are going to achieve it... our import basket largely gets affected by oil that will have its own trajectory, possibly a lowering trajectory or a downward trend in the years to come, whereas our export basket has all the things that the world desires," the minister said at industry body CII's annual session.


Drawing on Michael Porter's competitive advantage theory, Goyal said: "There are several goods where India can become self-reliant. There are unnecessary imports, often of low quality and very poor, sub-standard goods, unsafe to use".

He said that the overall exports had been at $500 billion for almost a decade but reached $776 billion in FY23 with $450 billion of merchandise exports and $326 billion of services exports.

"So we will be an economy which will be reporting surpluses in the years to come. And these free trade agreements will only accelerate that process, will help us generate surpluses, help us keep a strong economy," he said.

Goyal said everybody wants India to fast track an agreement.

"The free trade part is separate. They want an FTA, which is fast-track agreement," he said.

India is negotiating trade pacts with the UK, Canada, the EU and the EFTA, which comprises Switzerland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland.

Emphasising that FTAs are a two-way traffic, he said: "I feel very sad when sometimes I'm told 'we want access to the European market, but please don't allow them to come into our market'".