Districts as Export Hubs

Foreign trade today constitutes 45% of India’s GDP. Special focus and dedicated attention need to be paid to India’s export promotion in its economic policies to leverage trade for higher sustained growth. Given the diverse elements that contribute toward an enabling and conducive foreign trade environment, any policy/strategy to boost exports requires the active support of the State Governments. Thus, States need to be engaged actively in export promotion activities and exports cannot exponentially increase without their active involvement. Earlier, export promotion, as a subject was dealt by only the Central Government without any active, credible mechanism involving the State or District level stakeholders in the decision-making process to promote goods and services produced at the grassroots level. The export promotion activity had to be decentralized to boost local production and make Districts active stakeholders in driving the export growth of local products/services. This will also help in filling the existing gaps and bottlenecks in exporting identified products/services from the Districts. Every District has products and services which are being exported, and can be further promoted, along with new products/services, to increase production, grow exports, generate economic activity, and achieve the goal of AtmaNirbhar Bharat, Vocal for local and Make in India. Department of Commerce, through the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), is working with the State / UT Governments in a phased manner to achieve this objective.