Exporters get Rs 900 crore relief package

The government on Thursday announced a Rs 900-crore package for exporters to help them tide over the slowdown in developed markets and rising input costs. RBI has already announced interest subsidy of 2% on rupee export credit for handicrafts, handlooms, carpets and small and medium exporters. Along with the interest subsidy the total relief package for exporters stands at nearly Rs 1,700 crore.

The government did not accede to exporters’ demand for foreign currency credit at competitive rates. However, a committee headed by finance secretary RS Gujral will look into this.
Sectors which would benefit from the government, engineering goods, pharmaceuticals and chemicals, apparels and others.

The latest concessions announced by commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma will mainly for export of engineering goods, pharmaceuticals and chemicals and to markets in Latin America, Africa and the CIS.

The government has also announced a scheme of 1 per cent special bonus. In other words, exporters will get 1 per cent duty credit on the total value of pharmaceuticals, engineering and chemicals goods shipped out.

Since there will be no separate annual supplement to the five-year foreign trade policy (2009-14), the measures announced have been incorporated through amen-dments to the existing policy. Commerce secretary Rahul Khuller said, “In a ballpark range, excluding interest subvention, it will be around Rs 800-900 crore. For interest subvention the outgo will be around Rs 800 - 1,000 crore... A total of about Rs 1,700 crore.”

"These are not easy times for the exporting community. The shroud of economic uncertainty still envelopes the global economy. The troubles which began with a sovereign debt crisis in Europe last summer continue and still linger. Actually things have become even more serious thereby sapping both business and consumer confidence in one of our largest markets - US. We have to ensure that export growth continues," Sharma said. The commerce ministry has undertaken a series of measures to open up new markets to counter the slowdown in the country's traditional markets like US and EU.

Source: Times of india