 Union Textiles Minister Thiru Dayanidhi Maran has expressed satisfaction over the recently announced Annual Supplement 2010-11 to the Foreign Trade Policy 2009-14. He hoped that the incentives offered would result in increase in exports of handicrafts items and this initiative would help the sector maintain the growth and achieve its export target of Rs. 9910 crore in 2010-11.
Thiru. Maran said this while meeting the delegation led by Shri Raj Kumar Malhotra, Chairman of EPCH along with the exporters of handicrafts, which called on him today to thank him for various incentives announced by the Government.
The Foreign Trade Policy 2009-14 which was announced in August 2009 was an important step towards attaining the positive trend shown in the handicrafts exports. The annual supplement 2010-11 of Foreign Trade Policy 2009-14 is in continuation to the same spirit and intent and will help the handicraft sector attain the double digit growth in the year 2010-11, Thiru. Maran added.
The Handicrafts Sector has been given due recognition in this Annual Supplement and the following benefits has been offered to the Sector:
1. All handicrafts exports at present entitled to 5% duty credit scrip on exports under Focus Product Scheme shall the entitled to additional benefit of 2% of bonus over and above the existing benefit of 5%. The benefit shall be available on exports w.e.f. 01.04.2010. All handicrafts mean 67 items under Table 2 and 44 items under Table 5 of Appendix 37D of Handbook of Procedure Vol -1 of 2009-14.
2. Barmer (Rajasthan) has been added in the list of Town of Export Excellence (TEE) under Appendix 7 of Hand Book of Procedure Vol-1.
3. The facility of Duty Free Import of tools under Duty Free Import Scrip (non functional at present due to non-issue of custom notification on the subject shall be made operational).
Further, there has been extension in case of DEPB (till June 2011), Zero duty EPCG scheme (till March 31, 2012) and status holder incentives scheme (till March 31, 2012)
Thiru Maran said that the incentives offered in 2009-14 have resulted in positive export growth; however, there is still a lot to be done to maintain the growth in the future. He further said that the additional benefits are important since the global economy is yet to completely recover from the economic slowdown.
The exports of handicrafts which had declined by around on 50% in the year 2008-09, showed some signs of recovery in the year 2009-10 and stood at Rs 8718.94 crore registering a growth of 6.55%. During the period April-July 2010-11 the exports were to the tune of Rs. 2743.51crore registering a growth of 15.72%.
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