FM Announces Measures To Boost Export And Mega Shopping Festival Amidst Gloom
Addressing the gloomy sentiment and visible stress in the economy, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman today announced a slew of measures to boost export. She was accompanied by the Minister of State for Finance & Corporate Affairs, Anurag Singh Thakur.
She announced an additional credit support of up to Rs 68,000 crore in the priority sector lending, along, a higher insurance cover will be given by banks to lend working capital for exports, which will reduce the burden on exporters. The government expects in a rough estimate that for USD based lending rates will come down by around 4 per cent and for rupee based lending rates will come down by 8 percent.
She mentioned that the government is looking at improving the use of technology to reduce the turnaround time of exports and to make the refunds speedily while maintaining that fully electronic refund mechanism for GST will come soon.
She announced that the Remission of Duties or Taxes on Export Products is to replace the existing all Merchandise Exports from India Scheme (MEIS). Existing MEIS and old Rebate of State Levies Scheme (ROSL) in textile will continue till December 31, 2019. "In a bid to help the exports, the government has revised priority sector lending (PSL) norms for export credit. Effective monitoring of Export financing will now be done by the Department of Commerce," she said.
Finance Minister clarified that exporters are not taking advantage of export concessions and will assign a senior official to work closely with the exports organizations to use concessional tariffs in their field. It is in the direction that exporters will benefit the special tariffs opportunity and preferential duty benefits across the sectors.
She announced a mega annual shopping festival in line of world’s mega festival like Dubai and Singapore. She said it will take place next year which will be spread across four destinations. These festivals, among other things will focus on, gems, jewellery and textiles. She said the ministry will soon finalize the details.
She also stressed that she is aware of the falling GDP and the sector wise consultation is on to address the specific problems.
Finance Minister also announced the mass enrolment of artisans across India for handicraft promotion. She said it will enable handicrafts industry to effectively harness e-commerce for exports. The government has underlined that enabling handicraft industry to harness e-commerce portal can boost to exports as several artisans can directly showcase their products online.
Replying to a question on the economic slowdown and BJP being a cadre based organization, she said she is consulting with various stakeholders and she is here to address the situation.
