Mid-term review of Foreign Trade Policy announced; key highlights

With a focus on policy measures to boost the exports of goods and services and to increase employment generation along with value-addition, the government on Tuesday released the mid-term review of the Foreign Trade Policy (FTP).

Director General of Foreign Trade, Alok Chaturvedi, released the mid-term review of the FTP. 

Earlier it was to be announced together with the implementation of the GST regime, but was postponed to take into account feedback from the export sector regarding the GST-related issues.
 
Key highlights of the FTP:

- The FTP would focus on micro, small and medium enterprises, labour-intensive segments and agriculture sector.

- Incentives for goods exports is Rs. 4,567 crore, and for services exports is Rs. 1,140 crore.

- This is in addition to the recently announced incentives to ready-made garments.

- Self-certification scheme for duty-free imports

- FTP is a dynamic document and regular changes are made to increase value addition in the country, generate more employment and boost exports.

- Today's announcement includes a 2% increase each in incentive rates of the Merchandise Exports from India Scheme and Services Export from India Scheme.

The five-year FTP was announced on April 1, 2015, and set an ambitious target of India's goods and services exports touching USD 900 billion by 2020. 

The FTP reportedly aimed at increasing India's share of world exports to 3.5 per cent, from 2 per cent.