Export growth like last year would be difficult to achieve now, says FIEO head Ajay Sahai

Minister of Commerce and Industries, Piyush Goyal has been talking about boosting exports from India, and many steps have been taken in this regard. The government has also set the target of $1 trillion exports by 2030. But Ajay Sahai, Chairman of Federation of Indian Export Organisation (FIEO) believes that repeating the same export growth like last year would be difficult owing to global slowdown.  

“It will be definitely challenging for us especially in the times like this, we reached from $290 to $422 billion last year, this year I am looking at a figure of $470 billion and if the geopolitical tension changes drastically these figures can go upwards,” Sahai said. He also made this clear that export will not be contributing that much to the GDP growth the way it did in 2021-2022 

“India’s 50 per cent incremental growth came from exports we have had $130 billion growth in merchandise sector and $45 billion in services sector that took to $175 billion this year, I am not expecting that to happen,” Sahai said. 

According to him, since PLI investment in some sectors is maturing that will add into the export base of the country. “We are hoping this year electronics, mobile and pharmaceuticals sectors will push our exports,” Sahai said.  

“We are expecting the pace of the global trade to slowdown and it will to some extent will impact our export growth as well. We will have to look into how inflation plays,” the FIEO chairman added.  

Last year, the government set the export target of $400 billion for FY22 and the government is likely to set an ambitious target of around $800 billion for goods and services for 2022-23, almost 19.5 per cent higher than $670 billion clocked in 2021-22. But amid the global economy plunging into slowdown, export growth is likely to be impacted adversely, as many experts have opined.  

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