Govt. working on preparing new roadmap for boosting services exports

An inter-ministerial group (IMG) is working on drawing a new roadmap for boosting exports of services, a senior Commerce Ministry official revealed.
Rajeev Kher, Additional Secretary in the Commerce Ministry, told reporters that an IMG had already started working on bringing changes in the services sector, the Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCI&S) had been assigned with the task of collecting required data.
The IMG has created a total of eight working groups on sectors like health, tourism and logistics. He added that main idea was to get all relevant departments as well as ministries together on a single platform with a view to bring reforms in the services sector.
Speaking on the topic, he added, "Our attention is always on merchandise trade and not really on services trade. Mechanism for capturing data related to the sector is not good. It lacks substance and we also do not have survey based data."
Currently, the Commerce Ministry obtains stats on services from the Balance of Payment (BOP) data prepared by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) when negotiating trade agreements with foreign countries on services.
India's share of services exports in total world exports of services has been enjoying a faster growth than the share of merchandise exports. It grew 0.6 per cent in 1990 to 3.3 per cent in 2011.

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