NEW DELHI: The government wants to capture greater market share in global trade and has kick-started an exercise for mapping region specific exports to achieve this aim. It has identified the pharmaceutical sector as an "export commodity with high potential" to garner higher market share in Europe and auto components to drive exports growth in South America.

"It is an initial thought and discussions are on to increase India's market share in global exports through products that are expected to grow at a high pace in next four years," said an official, who did not wish to be identified. The move comes at a time when India's exports have been declining for the past 18 months. India's exports in 2015-16 amounted to $261.1 billion, down 15.85% from that in the previous fiscal.

In the two preceding years, the country's share in world exports remained flat at 1.7%. The government has set a target of increasing exports to $900 billion by 2018-19 and expanding the country's share of global exports to more than 3%. The exercise, which began a few days ago, is in line with Foreign Trade Policy of 2015-20 which seeks to support 852 tariff lines that were not supported earlier. These include fruit, vegetables, dairy products, oil meals, Ayush and herbal products, paper and paper board products.

Under this, the government has asked the export promotion council for pharmaceuticals to prepare a forecast of possible compounded annual growth rate in the next four years taking 2015-16 as the base year of India's pharmaceutical exports to Europe since export commodities with high potential should grow faster than the European market in the next four years ending 2019-20. This means exporting companies will have to identify possible products in each of the categories such as bulk drugs, formulations, Ayush and herbal products, taking into account market dynamics such as patent expiries and the possible expansion of the generic sector of Europe.

Source:economictimes.indiatimes.com