Indian e-commerce exports could surge by another $10 billion over next 2-3 years: DGFT
Rajesh Kumar Mishra, an additional director at the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) has said that Indian e-commerce exports could surge by another $10 billion over the next two to three years, supported by the country's large MSME ecosystem. Pointing out that China records around $300 billion in annual e-commerce exports, he said India can easily up its game with its existing strengths and a few tweaks in the approach.
He said e-commerce enables Indian manufacturers and small exporters to directly cater to global consumers. He said ‘the e-commerce caters to requirements of a global consumer base, so the platforms which are there, online platforms and leveraging the supplies, supply chains like India Post, our own postal department government of India entity, which provides very competitive rates for supply of goods abroad, so that can be leveraged to create a situation where our small consignments can be sent at a competitive rate to a foreign country.’
Talking about free trade agreements (FTAs), he said MSMEs need to prepare to take full advantage of the opportunities created by such pacts. He said any FTA requires lot of preparation for the manufacturers and exporters to take benefit, so that is a very, very important area of preparation by all the stakeholders. He also highlighted the importance of MSMEs in achieving the government's manufacturing growth ambitions. He said ‘that is the policy of the government that our manufacturing should become 25 per cent in the long term of the GDP, so that process has to be helped by the MSME sector as that is a large number of enterprises and better quality, better ambition, the idea of becoming bigger and bigger as an entity that will help in creating that sigma impact.’
