Piyush Goyal to meet exporters Thursday

Commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal will meet exporters and industry on Thursday to take stock of India’s exports and deliberate ways to push outbound shipments from the country. Issues related to container shortage, Red Sea crisis and export targets are likely to be discussed, officials said.

“It is a review meeting to on state of exports and export promotion,” said an official.

India’s goods exports in FY24 were $437.1 billion and imports were $675.4 billion.

The ministry has been developing standard operating procedures to negotiate free trade agreements with other countries and could come up for discussion, said another person aware of the meeting.

Exporters are also likely to take up the issue of extending the Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme to leather intensive sectors such as leather and footwear.

Exporters have already raised with the finance ministry the issue of high import duty on wet blue leather which is used in making high-end luxury goods.

Separately, gems and jewellery exporters on have sought a reduction in import duty on gold, silver, and platinum bars to 4% in the forthcoming Budget from 10-12.5% now.