Nirmala Sitharaman to take stock of falling exports from today

NEW DELHI: Commerce & industry minister Nirmala Sitharaman will take stock of India’s declining exports, starting Tuesday, as part of an exercise to assess the country’s trade trends in this financial year and the interventions needed to strengthen overseas shipments.

The minister is scheduled to first meet representatives of 13 export promotion councils, including those from the engineering, pharmaceutical, cotton textile, leather and chemical sectors. Officials from the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority and the Marine Products Export Development Authority will also attend the meeting.

“The minister plans to meet all 40-odd export promotion councils over time but in smaller groups so as to give sufficient time to their concerns. The meeting has been called to discuss reasons for the decline in exports and ways of checking it,” an official said.

India’s exports contracted for the 13th consecutive month in December, falling 14.75% from a year ago. The government is concerned over the dismal performance of exports, which are not expected to exceed $270 billion in the current financial year after clocking $310.5 billion in the previous year.

Imports fell 3.88% to $33.96 billion in December from a year earlier, leading to the trade deficit widening to $11.66 billion from $9.8 billion in November. Exports fell in 15 of 30 segments, including iron ore, gems & jewellery and engineering goods.

Sitharaman’s assessment exercise will coincide with visits by senior commerce department officials to various states to encourage them to increase exports. The officials have already travelled to Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan. Last month, the states were asked to identify infrastructure bottlenecks such as lack of proper road connectivity to ports, and more.