While expressing confidence that India will reach its export target of $300 billion during the current financial year, the Director General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), Dr Anup Pujari, has said that the recent decision to denote payment to Iran in rupees will provide an opportunity to exporters.
Delivering the keynote address at ‘Karnataka: Export Vision 2020', organised by the Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO), here on Monday, he said that following this decision any Indian who exports to Iran does not have to bother about payment in dollars. The exporter will get the payment in rupees. This will help break the barriers of convertible currency to exporters.
Soon a delegation from FIEO will go to Iran to increase and expand export from India to Iran. However, it is important to add value to the existing export items and find new ones for growth, he said.
Touching upon the export target for the current financial year, Dr Pujari said India will reach $300 billion. The country had reached $243 billion in the export sector till January-end this fiscal.
Pinning his hopes on pharma and engineering product exports for reaching this target, he said export of pharma products to Latin America and Africa are doing good, as India supplies good low-cost pharma products. Added to this, India supplies engineering products to other nations at competitive rates.
On the target of $500 billion for the next fiscal, he said this was the double of the last fiscal's achievement of $247 billion. After considering the situation of the current financial year, he said people have doubts whether the country will reach $500 billion target in the next fiscal.
Speaking at a technical session later on, he analysed that achieving $500 billion can be possible. For this, ports in the country should have a long-term goal, and efficiency of the existing ports should be improved to provide better service. Value-addition to the existing export commodities is also important for achieving this.