Promoting agricultural exports is a continuous process. To promote the agricultural exports, the Government has introduced a comprehensive Agriculture Export Policy with the following vision:

“Harness export potential of Indian agriculture, through suitable policy instruments, to make India a global power in agriculture, and raise farmers’ income.”

Inter-alia, the objectives of the Agriculture Export policy are as under:

1. To diversify our export basket, destinations and boost high value and value added agricultural exports, including focus on perishables.
2. To promote novel, indigenous, organic, ethnic, traditional and non-traditional Agri products exports.
3. To provide an institutional mechanism for pursuing market access, tackling barriers and dealing with sanitary and phytosanitary issues.
4. To strive to double India’s share in world agri exports by integrating with global value chains.
5. Enable farmers to get benefit of export opportunities in overseas market.

The Government has also brought out a new Central Sector Scheme – ‘Transport and Marketing Assistance for Specified Agriculture Products’ - for providing assistance for the international component of freight, to mitigate the freight disadvantage for the export of agriculture products, and marketing of agricultural products.

The Department of Commerce also has several schemes to promote exports, including exports of agricultural products, viz. Trade Infrastructure for Export Scheme (TIES), Market Access Initiatives (MAI) Scheme, Merchandise Exports from India Scheme (MEIS) etc. In addition, assistance to the exporters of agricultural products is also available under the Export Promotion Schemes of Agricultural & Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA), Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA), Tobacco Board, Tea Board, Coffee Board, Rubber Board and Spices Board.

This information was given by the Minister of Commerce and Industry, PiyushGoyal, in a written reply in the Lok Sabha today.

***

MM