New Delhi, Mar 5: The government is drawing up schemes to provide credit on easy terms to MSME exporters, and offer assistance to deal with non-tariff measures imposed by other countries which have emerged as a barrier to India’s merchandise exports, a senior Commerce Ministry official said on Tuesday.Addressing a post-Budget webinar, Director General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) Santosh Kumar Sarangi said, the Commerce, the MSME and the Finance Ministries are working on these schemes.
The government is framing schemes to provide credit on easy terms to MSME exporters, promote alternative financing instruments through strengthening factoring services for them, he said.
These schemes are being formulated under the export promotion mission, announced in the Union Budget for 2025-26. The Budget has also announced the setting up of BharatTradeNet as a unified platform for trade documentation and financing solutions.
Sarangi highlighted that export credit, as a percentage of total merchandise exports, is only 28.5 per cent in India. The total export credit provided is estimated at $124.7 billion as against the estimated requirement of $284 billion in 2023-24.
The total export credit requirement is estimated at $650 billion for 2030 as goods exports are expected to surge to $1 trillion by then, he said.
He lamented that non-tariff measures being announced by developed economies such as the European Union’s carbon tax on steel and deforestation regulation limit market access for Indian exports in those markets, apart from high import tariffs.
The export market is also narrowing because of aggressive industrial policies of advanced nations like USA’s Inflation Reduction Act and Chips Act, and UK’s advanced manufacturing plan, Sarangi added.
Most non-tariff measures (NTMs) are domestic rules created by countries aim to protect human, animal or plant health and the environment. However, when NTMs become arbitrary, and cannot be scientifically justified, they emerge as trade barriers deliberately put in place to keep out exports.
The high cost of logistics is another disadvantage for Indian exports as currently, this works out to 8-9 per cent of GDP compared to 5-6 per cent in developed nations, the DGFT further stated.