Union Minister for Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal on Tuesday interacted with industry stakeholders on Ease of Doing Business, Free Trade Agreement opportunities and ongoing trade reforms, emphasising the need to strengthen export facilitation through both physical and digital mechanisms.
The stakeholder workshop, organised by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) at Bharat Mandapam, was followed by an interactive session with Piyush Goyal and Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Jitin Prasada.
During the interaction, Goyal said the government is considering integrated Commerce and Industry offices in major cities to provide businesses with a common point of access to multiple departments and agencies instead of setting up separate offices of individual departments at every location.
He also directed officials to examine suggestions raised by industry representatives during the interaction.
The Minister announced a proposed network of around 1,000 trained local personnel with knowledge of regional languages to support exporters and prospective exporters at the district and state levels. These personnel would provide handholding support to businesses through industry chambers and regional associations.
Goyal also highlighted the Trade Connect platform, which is being developed to provide exporters with product-wise and HSN-code-wise information, including destination-country tariffs, FTA opportunities and procedures for availing FTA benefits.
The platform is also envisaged to use digital and AI-enabled tools to help businesses identify potential export opportunities and infrastructure gaps.
The workshop brought together representatives from industry associations, trade bodies and sectoral organisations, along with senior officials from DPIIT and the Department of Commerce.
Discussions focused on Ease of Doing Business reforms, trade facilitation measures, opportunities under India’s FTAs and challenges faced by industry in accessing international markets and navigating regulatory procedures.
DPIIT officials also presented key initiatives covering Startup India, Intellectual Property Rights, investment facilitation, the National Single Window System, industrial infrastructure and reforms related to the Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation.
The presentations highlighted efforts to simplify and rationalise regulatory processes, increase digitalisation, reduce compliance burden and improve approval and service delivery mechanisms.
Representatives from pharmaceuticals, textiles, man-made fibres, copper, automotive and engineering, air-conditioners and logistics, along with MSMEs and women entrepreneurs, raised issues related to export competitiveness, trade documentation, regulatory processes, FTA utilisation, logistics, domestic supply chains, standards and testing infrastructure.
Industry representatives also called for greater interoperability between government systems and foreign trade platforms, including digital transmission and verification of Certificates of Origin under FTAs.
The discussions further covered logistics and trade-process bottlenecks, documentation backlogs and sea-freight costs, along with sector-specific concerns relating to rules of origin, imports, export quality, testing and certification infrastructure and regulatory certainty for MSMEs.
The importance of maintaining quality and adhering to international standards to strengthen India’s export credibility was also emphasised.
