Piyush Goyal Chairs Meeting with various Export Promotion Councils – Calls for 25% Growth

Lauds the Performance and Resilience of Exporters

Union Minister of Railways, Commerce & Industry, Consumer Affairs, and Food & Public Distribution Piyush Goyal chaired a meeting with various Export Promotion Councils (EPCs) on 20 April 2021. The Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Hardeep S. Puri, and senior Officers of the Department of Commerce and DGFT also took part in the meeting. This was the 12th meeting held by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry with the EPCs in last one year, underlining the government’s emphasis on resolving the export related issues, at the earliest.

Piyush Goyal lauded the performance of Exporters, for doing the nation proud in such difficult times through their resilience and hard work. He said that during 2020-21, the Country’s cumulative value of overall exports declined by just 7% compared to the previous year, despite disruptions, uncertainty, lockdowns, gradual unlockdowns, supply chain difficulties, labour issues, and order cancellations in the Covid year. He said that under the circumstances, the performance of the sector was really superlative. Trade data for March 2021 reflects the build-up of a strong recovery in exports, as the Merchandise exports in March 2021 grew by 60.29% as compared to March 2020. Mr. Goyal said that in the first two weeks of this month also, the performance has been very good.

The Minister, after listening to the various suggestions of the EPC office-bearers, said that the Government will go all out to support the exporters. He said that many of their issues, falling within the ambit of the Ministry, would be resolved in a time-bound manner. Mr. Goyal said that most of the sectors have larger export potential, which need to be identified and harnessed. He called upon the Exporters to strive to attain ambitious growth of more than 25% to reach US$ 400 billion merchandise exports during current year.