-Mandar Athalekar, Strategy Leader for Global Trade Management, Thomson Reuters

“Addressing the concern of consistent decline in exports over the past year, Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley, in his presentation on Union Budget 2016, assured industry that the government will continue to take measures to support the export sector. Reduction in customs duty rates on inputs in defense, capital goods, textiles, chemicals, petrochemicals, IT hardware, paper, Maintenance repair and overhauling [MRO] of aircrafts, etc., provision for deferred payment of customs duties, widening the duty drawback scheme to include more products and countries, infrastructure development of rail, roads and ports, tax benefits to new SEZ (Special Economic Zones), promotion of Indian ship building industry, implementation of ‘Indian Customs Single Window Project’ from beginning of forthcoming financial year, expansion of benches for customs, excise and service tax tribunal, abolition of Cesses levied by 13 ministries to simplify businesses and promotion of sophisticated IT systems in taxation, customs and bonded warehouses for increasing transparency and accountability were among the key export promotion and trade facilitation measures announced by him.

With all such trade facilitation, development and growth measures in place, it now remains to be seen how effectively these budgetary provisions lead to trade policy reforms which enable overcoming some of the significant challenges like Volatile Trade Policy for Agriculture, effective implementation of procedures that allow WTO-consistent actions against dumping (anti-dumping), subsidisation (countervailing duties), surges in imports (safeguard measures) for commodities such as steel and aluminium as an aftermath of Chinese slowdown, reviving multilateralism between trading partner countries and controlling currency exchange rate for external trade competitiveness enhancing investor confidence and sustainable growth.”