Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, Nirmala Sitaraman has unveiled the new 5-year Foreign Trade Policy (FTP) from 2015 to 2020 to boost exports, create jobs, and and increasing value addition in the country while supporting Prime Minister Narenda Modi’s ‘Make In India‘ and ‘Digital India‘. The FTP Policy will be reviewed after two and half years.
The focus of the new policy is emphasized on manufacturing and services sectors, with the ambitious plan of improving the ‘ease of doing business’. The focus of the new FTP will be also on defence, pharma, environment-friendly products and value-added exports. Government has also planned to promote the e-commerce industry. Incentives for units located in Special Economic Zones will also continue.
FTP2015-20Â introduces two new schemes. They are
- Merchandise Exports from India Scheme (MEIS) – for export of specified goods to specified markets.
- Services Exports from India Scheme (SEIS) – for increasing exports of notified services with different conditions for eligibility and usage.
Duty credit scrips issued under MEIS and SEIS and the goods imported against these scrips are fully transferable.
Measures have been adopted to push procurement of capital goods from indigenous manufacturers under the Export Promotion Capital Goods scheme to promote the domestic capital goods manufacturing industry.