State govts need to focus on inherent competiveness: commerce secy
KNN News, April, 05, 2014
Commerce Secretary Rajeev Kher said the involvement of
state governments is necessary to implement an export
strategy and meet the trade policy objectives. "Inherent
competitiveness comes from a country's economic strength
and addressing transactional issues, and these have to
be addressed squarely. These were areas where the state
governments need to get involved," he said yesterday
during CUTS 30th Anniversary Thought Leadership Lecture.
He said exports have now become a necessary ingredient
of economic policy and therefore the export strategy
would have to be mainstreamed in the governance
structures of the government. Most of the ministries and
departments of the government do not realize this
imperative and it is time that they recognized that
production was important not only for the domestic
market but also for export, he added.
The programme was organised by CUTS International in
partnership with Federation of Indian Chambers of
Commerce and Industry (FICCI) on the topic "India's
Export Competitiveness, Prospect and Challenges: The
Role of Trade Policy."
The Commerce Secretary declared that the country's new
foreign trade policy, which is on the anvil, will have
to be fashioned to produce value-added diversified
products and make inroads into new markets such as the
CIS, East and West Asia and Latin America. He also
sought to dispel the impression that free trade areas (FTAs)
were inherently faulty policy instruments to promote
trade.
"FTA's offer an institutional mechanism for trade and it
was important to know how these have been negotiated and
whether industry was able to take advantages flowing out
of such agreements," he said, adding that studies have
shown that in the case of the India-Korea FTA, only 20
per cent of it had been made use of by the industry.
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