The Union Commerce Ministry is designing a new scheme aimed at supporting export infrastructure in association with state governments so that states can provide better export facilitation services. Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman after the meeting of central and state officials has stressed states’ own efforts to create infrastructure capabilities in export production.
The decision about the launch of common export supporting infrastructure scheme was reached at the second meeting of the Council for Trade Development and Promotion on Thursday (January 5th).
The new scheme will be known as Trade Infrastructure for Export Schemes (TIES) is aimed to set up common facilities for accessory services for export production like quality testing, certification, trace-back of exports, packaging and labelling etc.
In the meeting, the Commerce Minister urged export bodies to diversify exports especially services. She pointed out that tremendous opportunities are there in service areas like medical tourism, health care, education, audio visual media etc.
The Minister also cautioned about the rising trend of neo-protectionism within WTO through the use of Sanitary and Phyto Sanitary measures and Technical Barriers to Trade. these measures have potential to adversely affect the country’s exports.
