Smart Business Seminar on How to Revive Stagnant Exports

Business Standard Smart Business

   The correction in dollar-rupee exchange rate is overdue as the Indian currency is highly overvalued in terms of Real Effective Exchange Rate (REER). This was stated by Rupa Rege Nitsure, Group Chief Economist, L& T Financial Services while addressing a panel discussion organised by Business Standard in association with the World Trade Center, Mumbai. The panel discussion was organised under BS Smart Business series on ‘How to revive stagnant exports.’
 

   Krishanlal Dhingra, Chairman (WR), Engineering Export Promotion Council said that to increase exports there was a need for refunding all taxes on exports and bring back Income Tax section 80HHC. He also emphasised the need for regulating shipping activities and charges.
 

   Mangesh Soman, Joint President, Corporate Economics Cell, Aditya Birla Group said that the small and medium units’ share in exports is rising and is now at 40-50 per cent. However, their limitation is that they don’t have resources to scale up. For that he proposed incentives to help labour intensive units to enable them scale up.
 

   Another important issue was highlighted by Keyur Parekh, Vice President and Global Head of Bedding & Hospitality Business in Welspun Global Brands Ltd. He proposed the government should harmonise trade relationship with more countries to help improve Indian exports. He also said that to reduce turnaround time at ports there should be green channel for exports.
 

   Prahalathan Iyer, Chief General Manager, Export-Import Bank of India explained several global challenges for making cheaper finance available, which include Basel-III norms implementation. Some leading international banks have exited major important regions, which impacted correspondence banking relations for Indian financiers. Basel norms can shrink global trade by 0.5 per cent.