The BGA India Team led by Managing Director Ratan Shrivastava, wrote an update to clients on India’s new Foreign Trade Policy (FTP) 2023.

Context

  • Breaking the tradition of five-year foreign trade policies, FTP 2023 adopts a “long-term” focus without an end date.
  • Emerging areas, such as e-commerce and multiple labor-intensive and green technology sectors will benefit from greater trade.

Significance

  • FTP 2023 is based on four key pillars:
    • 1) Moving from incentives to reduction of duties.
    • 2) Promoting exports through collaboration with exporters, states, districts and Indian missions.
    • 3) Easing doing business, reducing transaction costs and e-initiatives measures.
    • 4) Focusing on emerging export areas including e-commerce and multiple dual-use items.
  • The government has set sector-specific export targets, and the FTP aims for $1 trillion of merchandise exports and $1 trillion of services exports by 2030. While production-linked incentive schemes aimed at building sectoral capabilities will continue in multiple sectors, the government’s focus will increasingly shift towards addressing infrastructure constraints, boosting skills and procedural issues for exports.

Implications

  • Businesses and export associations have welcomed the policy for its pragmatism and policy consistency and see it moving India toward a freer trade regime. In the coming six months, the government will undertake product and market outreach globally to look for opportunities and synergies in trade.
  • Process automation will boost ease of doing business for exporters. Emerging areas like dual-use, high-end technology items, the facilitation of e-commerce exports and collaboration with state governments for export promotion will likely boost foreign trade.

BGA will continue to keep you updated on developments in India as they occur. If you have any comments or questions, please contact BGA India Managing Director Ratan Shrivastava at ratan@bowergroup.com.