Don’t depend on small incentives, subsidies; increase competitiveness: Goyal to industry

New Delhi

Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal on Thursday asked service exporters not to depend on small subsidies or incentives to increase exports and instead enhance competitiveness.

He said the industry should work on increasing and strengthening their competitiveness to tap global markets.

Ambitious targets of exports should not be affected by “small support subsidies and incentives. That has been the bone of contention between some services sectors and the government,” Mr. Goyal said.

He was addressing an event organised by the Services Export Promotion Council (SEPC).

The sector has time and again demanded continuation of Service Exports from India Scheme (SEIS). The government has discontinued the scheme.

“If I look at the records, when SEIS was there, actually your exports did not grow at all, very nominal growth was there,” he said, adding “you must have observed that gradually I am removing all subsidies from the export system... because this makes us uncompetitive, this holds us back.”

Citing examples, he said the IT sector never sought any subsidy, yet “they record healthy growth rate in exports.”