FEIO President says exporters flushed with orders for next fiscal
India should aim for US$525-$530 billion exports in 2022-23 as exporters are flushed with orders for the next fiscal, which are boosting growth prospects, FIEO President Dr. A Sakthivel said on 29 Dec 2021 in comments on over 35% growth in the export in first three weeks of December.
But he also reiterated that looking into the emergence of the new Covid-19 variants and supply side challenges at this point of time, “we would like to be a little conservative and will aim for an export of US$460-$475 billion during the next fiscal”.
The fiscal year 2021-22 is expected to end with merchandise exports of US$400 billion.
The performance is remarkable for the current year and was better than anticipated since lot of exports have been frontloaded. Shipments generally meant for December were shipped in November or earlier.
“Moreover, our exporters across sectors are flushed with orders for the next fiscal pushing the growth prospects. We will also be having additional exports coming from some of the PLI sectors in the next fiscal pushing overall exports and continuing us on the same growth path,” he said.
The Mega Textile Parks and Food Parks will also have a spin off effect on the export of Food and Textile products.
“Since our share in global trade is still less than 2%, we have a long way to go,” he added.
“Much will depend on whether we would be able to contain Covid-19 through massive vaccination across the globe and be able to create required capacity, which will decide whether we should look for 15-20% growth or even more for the next financial year,” he said.
The FIEO Chief expects global consumption to go up substantially in 2022, albeit the pandemic is controlled.
The good thing with India’s exports is that it has been a very balanced growth across sectors both in shipments by the traditional as well as sunrise sectors during the current fiscal.
“We are hopeful that the same trend will continue particularly as the order booking position of all exporters are extremely encouraging and the China plus one policy of global companies is definitely helping our exports,” Dr Sakthivel pointed out.
A trend of India’s exports during the first seven months of current year shows that the overall shipments grew by about 59%, almost all regions showed a growth rate of about 60% or more except for ASEAN, North East Asia and CIS countries.
“Therefore, in the next year as well, we feel that exports growth will be widespread and exports to NAFTA, Europe, Middle-East, Oceania will continue to boom particularly as we should look at concluding Free Trade Agreements with UK and UAE soon as well as CEPA and CECA with Canada and Australia in 2022,” said Dr Sakthivel.
He also called on the industry and Government to work together to address the supply side challenges. Lack of capacity is one of the major concerns to meet the increasing demand.
Moreover, with increase in the prices of inputs, skyrocketing freight rates and delays in shipments and payments have resulted in the need for additional credit.
While container shortage has eased due to peak season supplies for Christmas, New Year and Chinese New Year getting over, the same is likely to compound once countries open up after the holiday seasons, particularly, if the new variant is not brought under control, he highlighted.
The Government may consider giving a push to container manufacturing in the country particularly as a large number of containers are required for inland coastal shipping, he said.
It is also encouraging to note that the Government is pushing FTAs and CECA and CEPA to provide competitive market access to exporters, he added.
“We look forward to regional economic alliances with EU, GCC (UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait), SACU (South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho and Eswatini) and other economic regions,” said Dr Sakthivel. fiinews.com
