Mid-Term Foreign Trade Policy to be Revised Before GST Roll Out, July 1: Nirmala Sitharaman

NEW DELHI: Union Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the revised mid-term foreign trade policy (FTP) is to be announced ahead of July 1 to ensure its parallel roll out with the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime.

GST regime is supposed to be in place from July 1, 2017. The review was earlier expected to be in September.
After meeting with various stakeholders, including exporters as part mid-term review of FTP (2015-20), Ms Sitharaman said there was no suggestion to scale down the 2020 export target. The 2020 export target is of 900 billion dollars, including services.

She acknowledged that exporters had a number of concerns with the GST regime to be implemented from July 1, 2017. Government is well aware of it and will try to find the solution of each and every issue, she added.
She assured exporters that their concerns will be taken care of wherever there will be a need. The Minister said that her Ministry would facilitate a meeting between them and Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia and other officials in the Finance Ministry where they could seek clarifications.

She added that her Ministry was trying to fix a meeting with the Finance Ministry before the last meeting of the GST Council likely to be held around May 18-19.

Ms Sitharaman said the FTP review will focus on propelling SMEs, which generate jobs, and also look at the possibility of enhancing the scope of rupee trade by getting into currency swap mechanism with South-East Asian countries.