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| Fresh 500-cr sops for exporters of struggling sectors Fri, 11 Feb 2011 23:29:58 GMT |
| NEW DELHI: The government announced a Rs 500-crore annual package of incentives for export for products still struggling to make an impact in the global market. The sops follow a comprehensive review of all export sectors by the commerce department and will be available from January 1 this year. “Every sector has not rebounded and inherent instability continues in several large markets, including the EU, which poses a challenge for exporters,” commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma said at a press conference on Friday. Exports have grown 29.5% in the first nine months of the current fiscal, but the study has shown 617 products in sectors such as agriculture, chemicals, carpets, engineering, electronics, textiles and plastics that are yet to recover fully. The incentives announced are in the form of dutyfree import scrips that can be sold for cash in the market. The new incentives would help offset exchange disadvantage on account of appreciation of the rupee, exporters body FIEO said. Farm exports, too, got a boost with six new products including instant coffee and castor oil meal getting incentives at 5% of export value under the Vishesh Krishi and Gram Udyog Yojana. The commerce department will fund the fresh incentives from its own corpus. Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee had recently said that exporters should learn to fight for themselves and stop expecting more sops. The commerce department had announced incentives twice last year, once in January and then in March. “All the old incentives will continue,” commerce secretary Rahul Khullar confirmed. The government was confident that the target of $200 billion for merchandise exports would be met during the current financial year. |
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