Trump’s tariffs are new; but is enough being done by India to promote exports?

 

Trump’s tariffs are something new but precious little has been done in the last decade to promote exports in India. In the last few years specially after implementation of GST regime exports have become particularly complex specially for the small exporters. Here we have to consider the fact that a major portion of China’s exports are by small exporters. While I am not an expert on China’s export policies I did gather some information from small time exporters. These exporters mainly sell online on cross border selling platforms like amazon, ebay and a few others. Some of them have never travelled outside India but only get orders online. Talking to these people I got to know that the government does not have any policy on cross border selling. The laws specially GST laws are so complex that even export import agents, chartered accountants and even senior officers of commercial taxes department do not seem to have clarity on laws concerning cross border selling for small exporters. To add to the woes small time exporters have to register their business at eight ports to even start a business. Registration is very difficult and only offline registration by a import export agent actually works. These people charge rupees eight thousand to rupees fifteen thousand per port for registration. Registration can be done online too but the site does not work smoothly and it can sometimes a whole day to get registration done on a single port if at all. Exporters feel that it looks like a ploy by the department to keep away small time exporters and only encourage big businesses.

Exporters also said that it is a golden period for Indian exports if only the government does enough because rupee has become weak and sellers can offer lower dollar rates to importers abroad than their competitors in other countries.

Some exporters also talked about the era of P Chidambaram who made licensing procedure and exports in general very simple and could be credited with giving the decisive push to Indian exports specially by small exporters.

Hope the government formulates a robust export policy to combat not only Trump’s tariffs but the evil of babudom and red tapism always plaguing Indian exports. It would require several bureaucrats with deep knowledge of trade and commerce to implement a revolutionary exports policy to reap the benefits of a higher dollar rate versus the rupee.