The new foreign trade policy targets $2 trillion in export revenue.

On Friday, the Indian government released its new foreign trade policy for the period of 2023 to 2028, with the aim of boosting exports to $2 trillion by 2030. The policy was unveiled by Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, who expressed confidence that India’s trade will reach the target by 2030. The new policy will encourage trade in Indian rupee and focus on promoting ease of doing business, export promotion through collaboration with exporters, states, districts, and Indian Missions, and emerging areas like e-commerce and export hubs. The policy also introduces an amnesty scheme for one-time settlement of default in export obligation. Under the policy, the dairy sector would be exempted from maintaining average export obligation and a special advance authorisation scheme has been extended to the apparel and clothing sector. The value limit for exports through courier services has been increased to Rs 10 lakh from Rs 5 lakh per consignment. The foreign trade policy encourages ecommerce exports, which are expected to grow to $200-300 billion by 2023. The policy has no end date and will be updated as required. The Commerce Ministry stated that WTO’s global trade forecast predicts a slowdown of one per cent in global trade in 2023. By March 2023, the nominal GDP of India is expected to be around $3.5 trillion, and India is likely to cross $765 billion in exports in 2022-23. The country is expected to end 2022-23 with total exports of $760 billion as against $676 billion in 2021-22.