The
much awaited Foreign Trade Policy 2015-20 was unveiled today by Minister of
Commerce & Industry Mrs. Nirmala Sitharaman, at Vigyan Bhawan. The new five
year Foreign Trade Policy, 2015-20 provides a framework for increasing exports
of goods and services as well as generation of employment and increasing value
addition in the country, in keeping with the “Make in India” vision of Prime
Minister. The focus of the new policy is to support both the
manufacturing and services sectors, with a special emphasis on improving the
‘ease of doing business’.
During her address Mrs. Sitharaman stated that there were various forces
shaping India and its equation with the rest of the world. She urged the
Government and industry to work in tandem to deal with the challenges posed.
The
release of Foreign Trade Policy was also accompanied by a FTP Statement
explaining the vision, goals and objectives underpinning India's Foreign Trade
Policy, laying down a road map for India’s global trade engagement in the
coming years. The FTP Statement describes the market and product strategy
and measures required for trade promotion, infrastructure development and
overall enhancement of the trade eco system. It seeks to enable India to
respond to the challenges of the external environment, keeping in step with a
rapidly evolving international trading architecture and make trade a major
contributor to the country’s economic growth and development. She
promised to have regular interactions with all stakeholders, including State
Governments to achieve the national objectives.
FTP2015-20. introduces two new schemes, namely “Merchandise Exports from
India Scheme (MEIS)” for export of specified goods to specified markets and
“Services Exports from India Scheme (SEIS)” for increasing exports of notified
services, in place of a plethora of schemes earlier, with different conditions
for eligibility and usage. There would be no conditionality attached to
any scrips issued under these schemes. Duty credit
scrips issued under MEIS and SEIS and the goods imported against these scrips
are fully transferable. For grant of rewards under MEIS, the countries have
been categorized into 3 Groups, whereas the rates of rewards under MEIS range
from 2% to 5%. Under SEIS the selected Services would be rewarded at the rates
of 3% and 5%.
Measures
have been adopted to nudge procurement of capital goods from indigenous
manufacturers under the EPCG scheme by reducing specific export obligation to
75% of the normal export obligation. This will promote the domestic capital
goods manufacturing industry. Such flexibilities will help exporters to
develop their productive capacities for both local and global
consumption. Measures have been taken to give a boost to exports of
defense and hi-tech items. At the same time e-Commerce exports of
handloom products, books/periodicals, leather footwear, toys and customized
fashion garments through courier or foreign post office would also be able to
get benefit of MEIS (for values upto 25,000 INR). These measures would
not only capitalize on India's strength in these areas and increase exports but
also provide employment.
Commerce Minister stated that although exports from SEZs had seen phenomenal
growth, significantly higher than the overall export growth of the country, in
recent times they had been facing several challenges. In order to give a
boost to exports from SEZs, government has now decided to extend benefits of
both the reward schemes (MEIS and SEIS) to units located in SEZs. It is
hoped that this measure will give a new impetus to development and growth of
SEZs in the country.
Trade facilitation and enhancing the ease of doing business are the other major
focus areas in this new FTP. One of the major objective of new FTP is to move towards paperless working in 24x7
environment. Recently, the government has reduced the number of mandatory
documents required for exports and imports to three, which is comparable with
international benchmarks. Now, a facility has been created to upload
documents in exporter/importer profile and the exporters will not be required
to submit documents repeatedly. Attention has also been paid to simplify
various ‘Aayat Niryat’ Forms, bringing in clarity in
different provisions, removing ambiguities and enhancing electronic governance.
Manufacturers, who are also status holders, will now be enabled to self certify
their manufactured goods in phases, as originating from India with a view to
qualifying for preferential treatment under various forms of bilateral and
regional trade agreements. This “Approved Exporter System” will help
these manufacturer exporters considerably in getting fast access to
international markets.
A
number of steps have been taken for encouraging manufacturing and exports under
100% EOU/EHTP/STPI/BTP Schemes. The steps include a fast track clearance
facility for these units, permitting them to share infrastructure facilities,
permitting inter unit transfer of goods and services, permitting them to set up
warehouses near the port of export and to use duty free equipment for training
purposes.
Considering the strategic significance of small and medium scale enterprise in
the manufacturing sector and in employment generation, ‘MSME clusters’ 108 have
been identified for focused interventions to boost exports. Accordingly,
‘Niryat Bandhu Scheme’ has been galvanized and repositioned to achieve the
objectives of ‘Skill India’. Outreach activities will be organized in a
structured way at these clusters with the help of EPCs and other willing
“Industry Partners” and “Knowledge Partners”.
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