Union Government unveils new Foreign Trade Policy

April 3, 2015

Union Government has unveiled new Foreign Trade Policy (FTP) to make India an exporting powerhouse in the next five years.
The new trade policy will incorporate government ambitious initiatives such as Make in India, Digital India mission, Skill India programme, ease of business in order to boost jobs and take India’s exports to 900 billion dollars by 2020.
The goals of the new policy will be achieved by simplifying complex procedures, addressing infrastructural bottlenecks and eliminating manufacturing hurdles.
Focus areas of the new FTP are

Labour intensive sectors to generate more employment.
Boosting to environment-friendly products.
High tech value addition.
Involving skill India programme to promote entrepreneurship.
Moving towards branding of products.
Incentives for units located in SEZs.
Making the life of traders easier.

Key facts

FTP also takes into consideration e-commerce. Under the new policy, India’s nascent, e-commerce sector would also be extended sops.
The new trade policy will be based on two new schemes- Merchandise Exports from India Scheme (MEIS) and Services Exports from India Scheme (SIES). Under these two schemes, government has merged all earlier export promotion schemes.
MEIS is for export of specified goods in specified markets with the rate of rewards range from 2 to 5%. SIES is for increasing exports of notified services and the selected services will be rewarded at the rates of 3 to 5%.
The new also move towards paperless working. In this regard, a facility has been created to upload documents in exporter/ importer profile in order to avoid need of repeatedly submitting documents.

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