Engineering Exports Promotion Council (EEPC) is worried over slowing engineering exports from the country. The council, which had brought out a vision document targeting $1.5 trillion in engineering exports for India by 2047, feels even the $300 billion target by 2030 looks a distant dream at the current rate of exports.
EEPC vision document had set an aggressive target of $1.5 trillion of engineering exports by 2047.
The organization is aiming at $300 billion by 2030 and thereafter achieve a 8-10% growth to touch $1.5 trillion by 2047.
“This looks aggressive since we are talking about a growth that was never achieved and unprecedented. Covid times were different, where India did extremely well. For April – November, 2023, we registered around $69.5 billion of engineering exports. There has been a definite slowdown and we are not able to even go to our levels of 2022-23 and we have to see how we progress with this,” Rakesh Shah, chairman, Trade Promotions, EEPC said.
For the year 2022-23, the country’s engineering exports stood at $107 billion and the proportionate exports till November should have been $82 billion, a shortfall of about $12.5 billion.
“For the year 2021-22, Indian engineering exports stood at $112 billion, which was one of the best we did. Thanks to Covid, we became an alternative to China and that gave us a big boost,” Shah said.
“The latest challenge for Indian exports is the Red Sea issue that has come up. This has not only increased the transit time but also our costs which have gone up by two times. The transit time was much shorter a few weeks back and this a big challenge now on the logistics front,” he added. As for individual markets, Russia has come up very well and our exports have grown up by about 140%, thanks to the rupee trade. But logistics is a big problem to Russia due to the Ukraine war.
According to him, India needs to really go to markets like Africa, where it doesn’t have a major share at the moment, and Oceana because Indian technology today is most suited to the developing world. These are the non-traditional markets that need India’s focus.
Almost 90% of Indian industry is low to medium technology oriented. The industry needs to focus on value added items, which it has not able to do much. There is a slowdown in the US and Europe, and hence there is a demand-side slowdown too.
