With automobile exports from India on a decline, TVS Company Chairman and Managing Director Venu Srinivasan today asked for government support saying the auto industry has suffered after a substantial reduction of duty drawbacks scheme.
"In the past we used to have better incentive of duty drawbacks which have been substantially reduced when all the schemes were homologated into one scheme. The automotive industry is really suffered from this," Srinivasan said at the Board of Trade meeting here.
He said important markets like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have been excluded from the incentive.
"I think those are really big markets for us, Africa is a big market and they are all suffering from lack of forex because of the commodity crash. Therefore we do need help," Srinivasan said.
Commenting on the India-EU FTA, he said: "When we are negotiating trade agreements there should be ease of access through investments rather than through trade, particularly with EU on the automotive industry."
"We would give them all the freedom they want to invest and compete here but we should be careful on reducing the rates which will mean that there will be non-value added exports to us," he said.
Last year, the government had raised duty refund rates on a host of items, including iron, steel, garments and marine products with a view to promoting exports which are on a decline for the past 11 months.
Commenting on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement, Srinivasan said: "The final issue would be on RCEP with ASEAN that we are looking at. China is a major part of it. It includes China and that is the biggest threat that we see to the domestic manufacturers both in components and in vehicles."
The 16-member bloc RCEP comprises 10 ASEAN members (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Laos and Vietnam) and their six free trade agreement partners -- India, China, Japan, Korea, Australia and New Zealand.
Reliance Industries' ED and Member of Board Nikhil Meswani too suggested steps to boost exports.
"I would request if we can encourage higher amount of domestic value addition. Keep that in mind in goods of origin when we talk about RCEP so that we dont have to revist FTAs.."
On textiles, he said the government needs to give special focus to this sector as small countries like Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh are exporting more than India.
"The reason is that our several lopsided policy
structures that need to be focused and put into perspective in order to encourage value addition. If these are corrected textile industry can alone export over USD 100 billion worth of goods from India creating more than 20 lakh jobs and this can be done virtually by no revenue loss to the government," he said.
The 70-member BOT includes senior officials from various ministries, industry chambers and corporates including ICICI Bank Ltd MD and CEO Chanda Kochhar, Biocon MD Kiran Majumdar-Shaw, Dr Reddy's MD Satish Reddy,
Some top industrialists did not make it to the meeting including Apollo Tyres CMD Onkar Kanwar, Hero MotoCorp MD Pawan Munjal, HCL Technologies Chairman Shiv Nadar, Mahindra Group MD Anand Mahindra, ITC Chairman Y C Deveshwar and Ashok Leyland MD R Seshasayee.
