The government is working on a strategy to boost share of services in total exports from the country, said Commerce & Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu.

The Indian industry needs to identify the markets that they want to export to and the Department of Commerce would work on market access issues there, the Minister said at a meeting on the services sector organised by industry body CII.

Prabhu further added that the World Trade Organisation (WTO) needed to focus on the most relevant issues in the world today and the mini-ministerial that India would organise in a few weeks’ time for top countries will deliberate on such issues.

“In my opinion services should be one of the most critical drivers of the growing economy and must be brought to the forefront,” Prabhu said.

The country needs to identify new services which have tremendous export potential such as healthcare and financial services and within that develop new products which could be exported.

The Minister suggested that sectors such as IT should look at developing newer markets such as Latin America as markets like the US and Europe were becoming saturated.

The services sector contributes 60 per cent of India’s GDP, 30 per cent of India’s exports and just 30 per cent of India’s jobs.

According to Uday Kotak, Chairman, CII National Council on Services, measures need to be taken to step up the share of jobs to 40 per cent and that the service sector become the “job creation engine” for the Indian economy.

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