Anand Sharma reviews global market with exporters' bodies

NEW DELHI: After reviewing the impact of European sovereign debt crisis and slowdown in the US economy on Indian exports, government on Friday assured exporters of fiscal support within the next 10 days.

"Hopefully, within the next days, if not earlier," commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma told reporters, when asked how soon exporters should expect the financial incentives.

Sharma held a meeting with the heads of export promotion councils (EPCs) of different commodities and reviewed unfolding of difficult situation in Europe- India's largest trading partner and slowdown in the US economy.

High-level Board of Trade, headed by the Commerce and Industry Minister and comprising well-known industrialists, including Hero MotoCorp Managing Director Pawan Munjal, ICICI Managing Director and CEO Chanda Kochhar would also be meeting on October 11.

After the BoT meeting, "the government will be finalising what incentives and support can be there, in particular to the labour-intensive sectors," Sharma said.

Contending that there was a case for interest subsidy to exporters, the minister said the rising credit cost has been "making the Indian manufacturing much less competitive globally," he said.

Sharma had recently met Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, apprising him of the problems being faced by the Indian exporters in highly uncertain global market.

Though the country's exports have shown a robust growth of 54 per cent during the April-August period of the current fiscal, the trend is difficult to maintain in the backdrop of the demand slowdown in the US and Europe.

The World Trade Organisation has lowered projections for the global exports growth to six per cent in 2011, against 14 per cent expansion last year.