New Delhi, May 11 (FN Bureau) Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal on Tuesday said that the country could hit the target of USD 400 billion in merchandise exports due to the performance of the sector in April this year and in fiscal 2020-21. He said there is a large potential for enhancing exports in several sectors like Pharma, Engineering, Auto-component, Fisheries and Agro-product. The minister was addressing a meeting with Export Promotion Councils to discuss various issues concerning international trade.
Goyal complimented the exporters for their encouraging performance, even during such trying times. He noted that India’s merchandise exports last month was USD30.21 billion, an increase of 197.03 per cent over USD 10.17 billion in April 2020 and an increase of 16.03 per cent over USD 26.04 billion in April 2019. He said that the value of export in the first week of May 2021 was also up by almost 9 per cent over the same period of 2019-20 (6.48 billion USD). He said that Export excluding POL, is even better, and has increased in this period by 15% over same period of 2019-20.
Regarding the issues raised by the participants, Goyal said that they should approach the Covid helpdesk of the Department for resolving the problems emanating due to Covid related measures. He said that the Department of Commerce has taken up several issues of exporters with the Ministry of Finance for their early resolution. He called upon the exporters to take advantage of the Production-Linked Incentive schemes for various sectors which have been announced.