Ecosystem to boost exports needed: FM

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, November 27

Voicing concern over the decline in exports, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today said there was a need to create an ecosystem to boost shipments and meet the challenge of slowing demand in overseas markets.

He asked the exporters to produce quality products at competitive prices. “One important factor, which our global experience now teaches us is that the world wants to buy good products, it wants to buy cheaper products and therefore you have to think ahead of the others, manufacture products which are cost and quality competitive.

“This can actually enable you, even in adverse global circumstances, to find bigger market. And we have to create in India an ecosystem which can actually facilitate that,” he said.

The Finance Minister was speaking at the closing ceremony of 14-day long India International Trade Fair here.

Jaitley said the “glaring challenge” is to step up shipments at a time when the world trade was getting compressed.

“The purchasing capacity of global buyer is contracting. Their ability to buy has been reduced and therefore suppliers are going to find it difficult (to get buyers),” he added.

He said declining prices of oil, gas, metals, food products and other commodities in the global market had adversely impacted the value realisation from exports.

“Volumes have not declined, values have declined and values have declined from oil to gas, to metal to commodities to food products. It gets reflected in the export figures month after month,” he added.