Hon’ble Minister of Commerce and Industry, Shri Piyush Goyal assures support to Services Exporters

April 23, 2021

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New Delhi [India], April 23: The Hon’ble Commerce and Industry Minister, Shri Piyush Goyal held an export performance review meeting yesterday and applauded the Export Promotion Councils for their respective sectors’ export performance.

Shri Maneck Davar, Chairman, Services Export Promotion Council(SEPC), the only export promotion Council mandated to promote Services exports from India, highlighted the contribution of the services sector and the trade surplus in services despite the challenging times and negative growth (April20-Feb 2021) as per RBI data.

The services sector reeling under the massive disruptions caused by the COVID pandemic since last 2020 was hoping to show its resilience to bounce back strongly is now finding the clock turning back due to the recent surge of a far more aggressive covid wave. Chairman, SEPC underlined the decline in exports of key services sectors like travel and tourism, medical value tourism, education, and aviation. He mentioned that the travel and tourism sector, a major contributor to exports has seen a decline of about 73% with a loss of employment and immensely grim prospects of any sort of business continuity in the near future.

Chairman, SEPC made a fervent appeal to Hon’ble CIM to consider the persistent representation of services sector exporters to issue the release of SEIS notification for 2019-20 which would partially alleviate working capital needs of the distressed services sector. Shri Maneck Davar, further added that SEPC had suggested that the Department of Commerce and Industry could consider the release of SEIS amounting to previously disbursed amount to bring some relief to the services sector. Ministry of Commerce could consider capping as well in view of spreading the cover of limited funds to all cross-sections of the services exporters. SEPC has already submitted a proposal on the alternative to SEIS for inclusion in the proposed FTP. The chairman mentioned that in view of the extension of the existing FTP till September 2021, Government should consider giving SEIS for 2019-20.

Shri Piyush Goyal in his remarks appreciated the contribution of the services sector in India’s export and mentioned that the Services Sector has demonstrated immense resilience and the decline in services exports is only down by 5% since last year’s figures. He assured all necessary support to the services sector in their efforts to tide over the crisis. He asked EPCs to take up the issues pertaining to other Ministries while assuring all necessary support. He advised SEPC to organize the interaction with the Ministry of Medium and Small Industries, Ministry of Finance, and Ministry of Commerce and Industry to look into the issues and support required by the services sector more specifically travel and tourism, healthcare (medical value tourism), education and aviation. Shri Goyal mentioned that he would be pleased to meet large and small exporters to collectively draw mitigation measures.

SEPC will be undertaking all necessary efforts to sustain the business continuity, revival, and global networking in its endeavour to serve the services sector and meet the export target set by Shri Goyal for the current year.