NEW DELHI: The target was $ 93 billion for merchandise exports for 2005-06, Union Minister for Commerce and Industry Kamal Nath told a meeting of the high-level Board of Trade recently in Mumbai.

These exports stood at a little over $ 66 billion from April to December 2005-06, while imports during this period, excluding oil, amounted to $ 65 billion.

Export growth regained its momentum in December, 2005. Merchandise exports grew by over 18 per cent in the nine months of the current financial year between April and December. This had been achieved on the already all-time high base of 26 per cent growth last year.

Mr. Kamal Nath asked the Board to give its inputs and suggestions for the coming Union Budget as well as the Foreign Trade Policy (Annual Supplement), scheduled to be brought out in March this year.

The Minister said he had taken up with Finance Minister P. Chidambaram the issue of the Fringe Benefit Tax (FBT) and Service Tax, adversely affecting export competitiveness, as part of his Ministry's pre-Budget proposals.

The Target Plus scheme would be revamped to make it more focussed and to ensure that the scheme fulfilled its objectives. Target Plus is an incentive scheme based on incremental exports and is being implemented at a cost of Rs. 8,000 crore.

"Since Rs. 8,000 crore is being spent on the scheme, it must generate at least 20-30 times this amount by way of export earnings for the country", Mr. Kamal Nath said.

Though he agreed with exporters on the need for a stable policy regime and the adverse impact of the extension of the DEPB (Duty Entitlement Pass Book) scheme, he indicated that the DEPB would continue till a new scheme was finalised. "Not only will it continue, but we are also committed to allowing a reasonable overlap period in order to have a smooth transition", he added.

The Board also discussed the recommendations of the five working groups set under the Chairmanship of Kumar Mangalam Birla of the Aditya Birla Group sometime ago.

The Working Groups are on Evaluation of Different Export Promotion Schemes, Trade Facilitation, Manufacturing Sector, Identifying specific sectors strategies having comparative advantage, and Special Economic Zones (SEZs).

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