At the present juncture when exports had shown a negative growth in April-January 1999 and recession was plaguing the global market, the exporters had been expecting the finance minister to initiate some bold measures to reverse the situation. But the association was totally disappointed, said Agarwal while addressing a news conference here on Wednesday.

He said while the 1998-99 budget had not mentioned anything about exports, the 1999-2000 Budget talked about the revamp of the pre-shipment and post-shipment credit designated in foreign currency and the constitution of a committee headed by revenue secretary to reduce high transaction cost of exports.

Agarwal demanded that the benefits to exporters under Section 80-HHC of the Income-Tax Act be made valid for atleast another five years so that they could enter into contracts with foreign buyers on a long-term basis.He also called for scrapping of various service taxes totalling 25 per cent on services like freight, air fare, agents commission, telephone, couriers and advertisements.

Exporters should also be allowed a 50 per cent discount on goods hauled by the Railways, he said. At present, goods are sent from various places of manufacture such as Moradabad, Saharanpur, Agra, Varanasi etc to sea ports by train and in the last one year railway freight had been hiked by five per cent, adding to the cost of exporters.

Agarwal further demanded that the movement of containers from various container depots to ports of shipment should be on actual cost basis without any profit. This alone would cut the cost of shipping and make exports more competitive, he said.

Those days when the government used to give air freight subsidy for new products for certain destinations were gone, he noted and suggested that the subsidyscheme for both air and sea freight be revived.

He wanted the government to consider allowing pre-shipment and post-shipment credit at zero per cent interest in order to render a competitive edge to exports in the world market.

Export credit to exporters must also be given across-the-table by banks on production of letter of credit or confirmed export order. Besides, the four per cent central sales tax on inter-state transfer of goods should be exempted, in addition to earmarking five per cent of the fob value of all exports for undertaking market research and for participating in trade fairs in exhibitions by small, medium and big exporters alike.