The new Foreign Trade Policy (FTP), scheduled to be announced at the end of this month, is expected to focus on enhancing the ease of doing exports from India, industry body PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry said on Friday.

The upcoming FTP is expected to be the key to defining the strategy for India to capture a significant share in the world economic system amid the changing global supply-chains, trade and investment dynamics, said Pradeep Multani, President, PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

At this juncture, we expect the New Foreign Trade Policy to ease exports-centric trade with enhanced trade facilitation measures by the Government, he said.

During its interactions with DGFT, PHDCCI suggested various FTP-specific points and some others that are outside FTP but directly related to trading.

PHDCCI has advocated the identification and promotion of potential products from specific districts. Given the growing importance of E-Commerce exports, PHDCCI has been advocating a focused policy chapter for the same.

PHDCCI has also been suggesting a simpler scheme for Duty Exemption on the lines of IGCR (Import of Goods at Concessional Rate of Duty) under section 25 of the Customs Act, where self-declaration is relied upon with some supervision.

If this is difficult PHDCCI had suggested and given a detailed presentation for simplification in the current Duty Exemption scheme itself where details of Exports and Import items need not be given in the beginning.

This will simplify the process and may help the country’s manufacturers immensely in being internationally competitive, Multani added.

The Export Promotion Capital Goods (EPCG) Scheme has been very successful both in boosting industrialisation as well as encouraging manufacturers to increase exports and explore newer markets.

At this juncture, we expect the continuation of the scheme, he said.

Multani also pointed out that while the RoDTEP scheme was supposed to take care of various duties and taxes outside GST, which become the cost of exports, it is unable to do so because of various anomalies, restrictions and very low rates.

PHDCCI had suggested RoDTEP on specific exporter basis that can be applied basis actual duties suffered by the specific exporter, akin to Brand rate of Duty Drawback.

We expect high focus on leveraging India’s potential in the Services sector for greater export revenue as education services, healthcare, financial and tourism services hold immense potential to increase India’s share in global services exports, he said.

Multani expressed hope that the new Foreign Trade Policy (2022-2027) will provide a renewed thrust by addressing the much-needed areas requiring the utmost attention to make India’s foreign trade more competitive.