In the article, "This minister hasn't been up to the job", T NC Rajagopalan says the commerce and industry minister presided over the 17 months of decline in export growth. It's common knowledge that the decline has global roots and impacted almost all countries big and small, India being no exception. The good news is India's export decline for non-petroleum products is only 2.5 per cent in rupee terms.
The author says the minister has not come up with impactful packages for exporters. Any exporter will tell you that a combination of MEIS and drawback is offering exporters a better package than what they were getting a few years earlier. In the new foreign trade policy, we have simplified the export incentive structure, merging five similar schemes into a single MEIS scheme based on ITCHS codes.
The claim that the minister has not fully assessed the impact of withdrawal of the Duty Entitlement Passbook (DEPB) scheme or the Incremental Exports Incentivisation Scheme (IEIS) is not true. When the DEPB was withdrawn in September 2011, its items were incorporated into the Duty Drawback Schedule. The IEIS was excluded as it was prone to misuse.
While the article says there has been no movement on bilateral or multilateral trade agreements, we are seeing some movement in the form of the Trade Facilitation Agreement. Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership is in full swing. Regular dialogue continues on free trade agreements. We have worked on creating paperless interfaces and now, applications for all schemes of Directorate General of Foreign Trade can be made online. We have taken immediate measures for punishing wrongdoers. Our system is transparent and even the minister is just a tweet away.
Ajay Srivastava, Joint DGFT, Udyog Bhawan, New Delhi
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