Total Goods and Services Exports to touch $ 650 bn this Fiscal

· "PLI Scheme and PM Gati Shakti will Catapult India into the Big League"

· "Aatmanirbhar Bharat is about self-confident India engaging with the world from a position of strength"

· Union Minister presents FE CFO of the Year Awards 2022 in Mumbai.

“India should look at expanding its footprint to the developed world, that is where the future growth story is”, remarked Union Minister Piyush Goyal in Mumbai on 25 March, 2022.

The crossing of 650 billion dollars in terms of India’s outward export goods & services, coupled with an overall international trade volume of around 1.350 trillion dollars will take the country into the big league, said the Union Commerce & Industry, Consumer Affairs, Public Distribution and Food and Textiles Minister. He was addressing the FE CFO of the Year Awards 2022, of Financial Express, in Mumbai today.

“We will probably top $ 250 billion in service exports”

Thanking industry members and media for acknowledging the $400 billion export achievement, the Minister said that he hoped to close the year with $ 410 billion or thereabouts.

On agricultural exports, he said, “We have had over $ 40 billion agricultural exports in the last 12 months. By the time we close the year, we had expected to touch $ 50 billion. It is a remarkable achievement for our farmers and the entire ecosystem associated with it.”

“Our engineering exports will cross $ 100 billion. Gem & Jewellery, Textiles, Leather- all of them are coming back on track. Petroleum exports also shown remarkable increase. Steel sector has also done extremely well”.

“We will reach wonderful targets on service exports; we will probably top $ 250 billion of service exports”, said the Minister.

Self-Reliant India and International Trade

“When PM Modi talks of a self-reliant India, he is certainly not talking about an India which closes its doors to international engagements. Aatma Nirbhar Bharat is about self-confidence, self-sufficiency, it is about engaging with the world from a position of strength”, said the Minister.

“No country in the world has grown without significant international engagement. Towards that end, we should look at some critical elements in our journey to Aatma Nirbhar Bharat. Every Ministry and Department of the government along with states is working on this goal”.

Free Trade Agreements

“We are negotiating Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with Australia, UK, Canada, EU, Israel and, very soon, we hope to launch it with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC- Middle-Eastern countries)”.

Speaking about the recently concluded India-UAE FTA, the Minister said, “Our own estimate is that the trade which is at about $ 60-65 billion will go up to $ 100 billion very rapidly”.

The Minister pointed out the need to look at various geographies and see how we can expand especially to developed countries. He said India is ready to do this.

“India is cost-competitive, has talent, is trusted, other countries look up to us for robust and resilient supply chains. India is looked upon as a reliable partner. Our industry is ready to work with the rest of a world which works on rule-based and transparent systems”.

“When India walked out of RCEP, we got unanimous support from across industry, farmers, everybody. Everyone was concerned about the presence of China since their economy is not very open, doesn't welcome Indian industry and has non-transparent pricing”.

PLI Scheme and PM Gati Shakti will be the game changers

“Production Linked Incentive Program, which emerged from an industry-led committee under the facilitation of the Government, was conceived after a careful analysis of 24 sectors, leading to a selection of 14 sectors to help them achieve scale and global competitiveness”, informed the Commerce Minister. PLI scheme has identified sectors that have huge global opportunities but where India has remained a marginal player, he added.

“As regards textiles, we have often been focused on one element of the market, ignoring sectoral areas such as technical textiles & geo-textiles where majority of the global trade lies but where we remained a marginal player. PLI scheme seeks to redress the imbalance”.

“Speciality steel is another area with low domestic demand and no price competitiveness where PLI scheme has been brought in. Food processing and drone manufacturing are other sectors where PLI has been brought in”.

For the first time, the Government has come out with a scheme for semi-conductor sector alone, providing Rs. 76,000 crore PLI support to attract domestic manufacturing, stated the Minister.

PM Gati Shakti

Highlighting importance of the innovative initiative called PM Gati Shakti, Mr. Goyal said, “It will help India develop infrastructure in a much more thoughtful, organized & intelligent manner. It will also help better monitoring and achieve faster rollout of infrastructure at stated costs, helping bring down logistics costs”. He urged the media to study and demystify this scheme for the common man.

FE CFO Awards

Mr. Goyal handed over the FE CFO Lifetime Achievement Award 2022 to JSW Group’s CFO and Joint MD Seshagiri Rao. He also handed the awards to twenty eight winners from industry across three categories.

The Editor of The Financial Express Shyamal Majumdar, Executive Director of Indian Express Anant Goenka and Chairman and MD, Hindustan Unilever Limited Sanjiv Mehta and chief financial officers and industry leaders were present on the occasion.