EEPC growth to remain flat at 15%

Engineering Exports Promotion Council(EEPC) expects growth in exports to remain flat this year at last fiscal's 15 per cent levels.

Exports grew by 15 per cent last year to $37.5 billion over 2007-08. "It would be great if we could sustain this growth this year," said Anupam Shah, chairman of EEPC. There has been a 23 per cent drop in exports during the first four months of the year. "As commodity prices have dropped owing to a dip in steel prices which is a major constituent in enginnering goods, exports in value terms have dropped. If we consider volumes, they have not seen such significant drop," Shah explained. EEPC is yet to compute the volume-wise export figures for the fiscal.

However, the council definitely sees month-on-month figures improving slowly. “We were growing at 44 per cent between April to September last year, and the next six months saw a 21 per cent drop. Comaparing the quarterly performance of this fiscal to that of last year's would be comparison with the peak,” Rakesh Shah, immediate past chairman of EEPC said.

He feels that the government could consider extension of line of credit to countries like the US and in the European Union that account for 44 per cent of India's engineering exports. “Instead of reaching out to a cluster developing countries with smaller lines of credit one can focus on these countries that can trigger more demand,” Shah explained. Engineering exports make up 23 per cent of India's merchandise exports. EEPC is also mulling to initiate talks with foreign car manufacturers to conduct vendor development programmes under the Market Access Initiative(MAI).