A review exercise by Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal has called for revamping of the Department of Commerce, fortification, and consistent strengthening of trade and investment promotion bodies including the Directorate General of Foreign Trade.
The Department of Commerce is set to undergo transformative changes towards evolving into a ‘future ready’ establishment of the Government with scaling up, strengthening, and infusion of ‘new age’ capabilities leading to an ecosystem which can achieve USD 2 trillion exports by 2027, according to a Ministry statement on Sunday.
A review exercise by Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal has called for revamping of the Department of Commerce, fortification, and consistent strengthening of trade and investment promotion bodies including the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT). With several emerging opportunities owing to shifts in global trade dynamics like rapid growth of services and disruptive potential of climate change, the Ministry has felt the need to proactively develop exports, build India’s brand in global trade and undertake constant monitoring of exports in ensuring the achievement of targets on time.
The revamping of the Commerce Department is also aimed at further building on its strategic direction and aspirations for the next decade and moving from inherent traditional roles to new roles by re-engineering the operation model with enhanced ‘new-age’ capabilities. In line with this, the revamped Department will have a more coherent trade promotion strategy with clear targets and execution accountabilities.
There will be a strengthened negotiation ecosystem with the right expertise and robust end-to-end processes with clearly defined focus areas and institutions. An optimal mix of talent with specialists and generalists sourced from across private and government sectors to create an agile setup responsive to market opportunities and exporter needs via interlinkages across bodies is in the works.
According to a project report on the designing of a ‘future ready’ Department of Commerce, a dedicated ‘trade promotion body’ to drive overall promotion strategy, export targets, and execution is proposed to be set up. A stronger active role for missions in trade promotion for market intelligence leads generation and localized research has been envisaged. Strengthening negotiations via multi-skilled negotiation teams and separation between bilateral and WTO negotiations has been envisioned.
It has also been proposed to set up a ‘trade remedies review committee’ including the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Ministry of Finance, and line ministries for transparency in investigations outcomes. Centralization and digitization of trade facilitation processes have been recommended to drive ease of compliance and scheme administration. Rehauling data and analytics ecosystem via centralized data management and embedded analytics capabilities in the Department of Commerce has been proposed.
A concerted push to strengthen brand India and re-enforce trade priorities is also one of the priorities of stakeholders in the review meeting which includes Secretary of the Department of Commerce BVR Subrahmanyam, CEO of NITI Aayog Amitabh Kant, Additional Secretary Rachna Shah, Director-General of DGFT Santosh Kumar Sarangi and other officials.
