Govt to hike corpus for focus product & market schemes

NEW DELHI: The annual revision to the foreign trade policy for the current fiscal is likely to add shine to the focus product and market schemes of the government, aimed at promoting exports of employment-generating products and developing new markets.

The finance ministry is inclined towards increasing the corpus for the schemes, which will enable the department of commerce to bring more products and markets within the purview of the schemes.

The two incentive schemes, introduced last year, had to be restricted to just a handful of products and countries as the allocated amount for both the schemes together was Rs 660 crore. “With the finance ministry agreeing to increase the corpus, we are hopeful of expanding the scope of two schemes,” an official said.

Under the focus-product scheme, exporters of leather, handicraft, handloom, value-added fish products, sports goods & toys and fireworks are entitled for a transferable duty credit scrip equivalent to 2.5% of 50% of the total FOB value.
This year, the scheme may be extended to other products such as textiles, herbal products, forest produce, etc.

Similarly, the focus market scheme, where the entitlement is higher at 2.5% of the entire FOB value, is open for exports to only 57 countries in Latin America and Africa where total exports are below a threshold limit. It is likely that the scheme will be extended to CIS countries this year, sources said.

The commerce department is, however, not sure whether it could convince the finance ministry to give enough funds to enable it to remove the clause of giving benefits to only exports taking place from EDI or electronically connected ports.