Govt to fine-tune foreign trade policy

KOLKATA: The government might bring in changes in the foreign trade policy by fine-tuning it in line with the changing requirements to help increase exports, director general of foreign trade KT Chacko said on Tuesday.

"It would be our endeavour and that of the government to fine-tune policies based on requirements in the industry to increase exports," Chacko said, interacting with members of Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) here.

Chacko said India could not remain complacent with $60-65 billion of exports as even small countries were exporting much more than that amount.

"There is a whole lot of conditionalities prevailing in the country preventing a quantum jump in exports which would be settled in due course," he said. "Indian exporters are some times not getting facilities available to exporters of other countries."

The DGFT said discussions were on between the commerce and agriculture ministries to select items for agricultural import which would be finalised before the next policy.

Referring to problems faced by exporters, Chacko said once the electronic data was in place, the government might be in a position to introduce single port concept to avoid different sets of requirement if consignments arrived at different ports.

He said a notification has already been issued wherein third parties could claim DEPB benefit on disclaimers.

Chacko, however, evaded a direct reply on a proposal for restricting free trade of chrome ore saying, "I am not very sure whether we should follow a policy which should expand the scope of chrome ore export."