The Federation of Indian Export Organisations (Fieo) would hold an international congress on services in New Delhi in July-August 2004 to give a thrust to service exports, M Rafeeque Ahmed, president of Fieo, announced here today.
The congress will be organised in association with the ministry of commerce and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
There will also be participants from multilateral organisations like the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (Escap).
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The federation is slating the congress as a major marketing window for Indian services exports, which, other than software and related services, have not received the necessary attention.
According to WTO statistics, the Indian services exports at $0.7 billion accounted for 1.3 per cent of global services exports in 2002, when the Indian share of overall global exports was less than 0.8 per cent.
Fieo, which represents all export earners other than those in software ($9.5 billion exports in 2002-03) and tourism, is trying to draw attention to this silent half among the Indian exporters.
It had won its first battle by extracting a major concession from the government, Ahmed added.
The latest Exim policy has allowed issue of duty-free import licences to all service exporters with annual exports over Rs 10 lakh up to 10 per cent of export earnings.
The next aim of the organisation is to focus on members' domain knowledge to boost services exports.