Shri Arun Shourie,
Minister for Commerce & Industry, Disinvestment and the North
East, has approved setting up of a separate Export Promotion Council
(EPC) for EOUs/SEZ units, after taking into consideration the
demand of the trade and the felt need of the sector. The newly
constituted Export Promotion Council would help in facilitating
exports and provide them the legitimacy to articulate the difficulties
of export oriented units before the State Governments and other
Government of India Departments. It will function as a approved
Trade Body under the Market Development Assistance (MDA) and Market
Access Initiative (MAI) schemes of the Department of Commerce
for organising specific innovative activities for their members,
which would lead to the growth of exports in this sector.
At present, there
are about 2500 export oriented units functioning in the 8 Special
Economic Zones (SEZs) and outside the Zones, contributing about
Rs. 27,000 crores of exports annually. Exports from these units
constitute 13% of the total manufactured exports of the country.
These units are working in the sectors like textiles/garments,
computer software, food and agro-products, gems & jewellery,
etc.
Presently, there
are a number of trade promotion councils seeking to promote export
activities of specific product group. The problems of export oriented
units are quite different from ordinary manufacturer exporters
in domestic area. As such the exiting export promotion organisations
have not been able to effectively address the issues of export
oriented units. Confederation of Export Units (CEU) had been functioning
as a representative body at national level in addition to about
a dozen associations at State level. These associations have been
competing with each other and therefore have not been contributing
to the cause of facilitating exports from these units. All these
associations had been requesting the Government for setting up
of a separate EPC for EOU/SEZ units.
