Exports growth encouraging though global conditions still remain challenging: FIEO president S C Ralhan

Commenting on the November, 2016 Trade Data, FIEO President, Mr S C Ralhan said that exports for the month of November, 2016 continued with its positive growth trend as India’s exports touched over USD 20 billion with a growth of 2.29 percent during the month. One of the other major encouraging sign was that the overall exports for the period April-November, 2016-17 also turned positive showing a growth of 0.10 percent during the period.

FIEO Chief further added that what is more assuring this time is that the growth across sectors in 20 out of 30 major product groups, have not only been positive in November but sectors specially Iron ore have continued to show an overwhelming growth of over 1012 percent with other sectors like Jute manufacturing, Oil Meals, Fruits & Vegetables, Coffee, Marine Products, Cashew, Tobacco, Engineering goods, Species have also shown impressive growth contributing in a major way to the growth in exports during the month. Mr Ralhan reiterated that Petroleum exports, which has a major contribution in the exports basket has for the first time in recent months shown positive growth of over 3 percent.

FIEO President added that though the sentiment still remains low in the global market and factors like US Fed rate hike and Demonetisation has also in some way added to the woes of the exporters, which may be seen in the figures of coming months. Mr Ralhan said that looking at the current trend, we are on our course to achieve exports of about USD 270-280 billion during the current fiscal. The focus in such challenging times should on marketing with proactive support from the government, which also has to ensure that exporters get their entitlements expeditiously so as to have liquidity.