The government is formulating action plans for around 20 agricultural products including banana, mangoes, potato and baby corn to boost their exports and these are likely to be ready in the next 3-4 months.“We have identified 20 products. At present, India’s share is low in global exports. We are working on a detailed action for all these products,” said Rajesh Agarwal, additional secretary, department of commerce, adding that the action plan will be discussed with all the stakeholders including states for further action.Fresh grapes, pomegranate, watermelon, guava, green chilly, capsicum, okra, garlic, onion, groundnut, alcoholic beverages, cashew nut, buffalo meat, jaggery, natural honey, and ghee are the other products included in the exercise as India aims to increase its share in global exports to 4-5% in the next few years from 2.5% now.The US, Malaysia, Canada, Russia, Germany, France, Korea, China, Indonesia, Japan, Italy, Belgium, and the UK have huge export potential for these products.Exports hitOfficials also said that Red sea crisis, Russia-Ukraine war, and domestic restrictions imposed on critical items like rice, wheat, sugar and onion made India’s agriculture exports decline 8.8% on-year to $43.7 billion in April-February FY24 as against $47.9 billion a year ago. The export ban and restrictions on commodities like rice, wheat, sugar and onion has hit agri exports of about $5-6 billion in the last fiscal.However, there has not been any visible impact of Israel-Iran war on exports as it is an evolving situation, officials said.“We are monitoring the situation. There are no major push backs as of now,” said an official.India’s exports of Basmati rice rose 22% to $5.2 billion in Apr-February 2023-24 from $4.2 billion a year ago while healthy growth in shipments of high-end Indian brands aided the outbound shipments of Indian alcoholic beverages.The exports of the 719 scheduled agricultural products in the Agricultural & Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) basket declined 6.85% to $22.4 billion during the 11-months period of the last fiscal as against $24 billion in April-February FY23.
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