FIEO suggests series of measures including outright exemption GST to boost exports

18 Feb 2019 Evaluate

In order to boost outbound shipments, exporters body Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) has suggested a series of measures including outright exemption from Goods and Services Tax (GST), interest subsidy for agri-sector, and more funds for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) players. With increasing protectionism in several countries, FIEO President Ganesh Kumar Gupta said domestic exporters need incentives to increase shipments.

Gupta further said these support measures, if provided on time has the potential to take the country's exports to $375 billion in 2019-20 and create lakhs of jobs. This fiscal, they will cross $325 billion to $330 billion. Talking about GST, he said it is necessary that an outright exemption window may be provided to exporters as was in existence before the GST regime to mitigate the liquidity problem. Though, he also said the government has taken several measures to provide quick GST refunds to exporters, but due to one reason or the other, substantial GST refunds remain outstanding for long time causing acute liquidity problem which adversely affect our exports growth.

The FIEO president added that there is a good potential for agricultural produce in overseas markets and, for that there is a need to extend the interest subsidy scheme to the sector. Besides, he sought more funds for improving trade related infrastructure in states, incentives to promote shipments of value added branded products, steps to increase trade with neighbouring countries like Nepal and Bangaldesh, and benefits on sales to foreign tourists.

In order to reduce transaction time and cost simultaneously increasing competitiveness, he said there is a need to provide more facility to the MSME exporters in the forthcoming foreign trade policy particularly of non-fiscal nature and added that exemption from IGST under advance authorization scheme. Under this scheme, manufacturers are allowed to import inputs at zero duty but only for the export purposes. During the April-January period of the current fiscal, exports grew 9.52 per cent to $271.8 billion.

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