National symposium on trade and logistics

Updated on: Monday, August 31, 2009

Kolkata: The Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT) in association with Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) today organised a National Symposium on Trade and Logistics here. The theme of the Symposium was to unleash the untapped potential with sessions on the new age gold rush - a discussion on the Bullion Market, the potential of reality in the target of 5 per cent share in world trade by 2020, the innovations required in supply chain and logistics to propel India onto the global map.

Addressing the session, Sougata Roy, minister of state ministry of urban development, hailed the Symposium as a timely effort to bring the best of the brains from academia, industry and bureaucracy and deliberate on issues pertaining to challenges that the Indian trade is facing and discuss the solutions for the same.

Speaking on the occasion, T C Venkat Subramanian, CMD, EXIM Bank, provided a macro perspective in the current global trade scenario. He apprised the present audience about the various facets of practical problems that are being faced by the global exporting community currently. He informed that economic growth in 2010 has been projected at 2.5 per cent positive growth which is half percent improvement over the IMF projection made in April 2009, showing the obvious signs of green shoots sprouting.

However, according to Subramanian, the most obvious impact of the economic slowdown has been the drastic decline in the global trade, particularly in volumes. Countries, which are dependent on exports like those in the South East Asia or Latin America are the worst, hit in comparison to India where the export-GDP ratio is just 15 per cent and that in China being 30 per cent.

He informed that India’s share in the world merchandise trade has risen considerably which is evident from the fact that in 2002 it was a mere (-) 1 per cent to 1.4 per cent but now has been targeted in 2020 to reach at 5 per cent and to reach that target he opined that India needs to have a comprehensive strategy of broader base of exporters, diversified market focus, more product range, more and more integration of the MSME in the export trade.

K T Chacko, director, IIFT, deliberated on the issue of a wrong societal perception about the very business of export and import trade and urged for a change of view about the fact wherein every government’s initiatives in this sector is viewed as appeasement of exporters. He pointed out the various concerns afflicting the Indian global trade right from the huge inland transportation costs, inordinate delays in ports and the labyrinth of Government red tapism.

Saugat Mukherjee, regional director, CII, said that foreign trade has been on the upswing for our country and India has been trading across borders for several years but still a large part of the potential of Indian trading remains untapped. He stressed on the importance of collaborating with educational institutes like IIFT to strengthen the bond between academia and industry through events like National and Trade Logistics Symposium.

Educationtimes

National symposium on trade and logistics

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