Commerce minister reviews export strategy with export organisations
10 Jan 2019
Union minister of commerce and industry and civil aviation Suresh Prabhu has suggested augmented credit flows to exporters, especially to the medium, small and micro enterprises (MSME) for generating more employment.
Presiding over a meeting of government officials and export organisations in New Delhi on Wednesday to discuss problems faced by the export sector, the minister highlighted the declining trend of export credit in recent months and exhorted banks to encourage flow of credit to the export sector
The commerce minister also suggested that the refund on input tax credit (ITC) be made online to ensure that the refund process is seamless and also transparent and accountable.
Representatives of the export sector highlighted the problems of pre-import under advance authorisation and requested the commerce minister to bring the notification deleting the condition with retrospective effect. Prabhu asked DGFT and the Department of Revenue of the finance ministry to look into it so that genuine exporters are not harassed.
The meeting also discussed banking issues like caution listing of exporters, third party/ third country exports and list of items to be traded with Iran. The Department of Financial Services of the finance ministry has agreed to discuss such issues with banks in the meeting scheduled on 22 January.
The industry acknowledged the support provided by the government by extending Interest Equalisation Scheme to merchant exporters which will boost exports of MSME units.
Minister of state for finance, senior officers from finance, revenue, DGFT and Department of Commerce and representatives of Federation of Indian Export Organisations, Pharmexcil, Gems and Jewellery Export Promotion Council, Engineering Exports Promotion Council and Chemexcil were present at the meeting.