Speaking at a seminar on "The New Exim Policy" organised by Ficci here on Thursday, Hegde admitted his failure to convince the finance ministry about the need for bringing down the cost of rupee export finance by 100 basis points. The commerce minister said: "Many of us in the government are obsessed with short-term results." Referring to the finance ministry, he added, "a little loss of revenue in the short term will bother them. Long range quantification of the benefits, particularly in accelerating the inflow of foreign exchange, is often a casualty. It is like being penny wise and pound foolish."

Stating that "we should also be pound-wise," Hegde wished that, "maybe after some time the finance ministry and the RBI will realise that if exports fall, itwill be detrimental to the economy". He hoped they would take some positive decisions at the earliest.

Hegde also underlined the need for better coordination between the commerce ministry and the finance ministry's revenue department. "Any discord between the two will be at the cost of country's export efforts", the minister said, adding that he had "even proposed a joint orientation programme for customs and DGFT officials so that the two departments do not function as watertight compartments."

Hegde underlined the need for bureaucratic stability at a time, "when there is political instability." Stating that he had not changed a single officer after assuming office, the minister said, "continuity in the office of these people has led to concrete results. Close cooperation between the political administration and bureaucracy and proper understanding of each other can help generate good policy measures." He said this in the context of the Exim Policy which evoked a good response from the exportingcommunity. Hegde, however, said that he was not satisfied with the performance of his ministry. "We wanted to do many things but could not do them", he said.Referring to performance, he said, despite last year's ambitious export target of 20 per cent growth in dollar terms, the actual achievement was only one per cent. He added, "all over the world, export growth has been adversely affected. Yet there is a silver lining in recent days. Exports in November were up by 6.5 per cent, December 4.5 per cent and January 8.9 per cent." This, he added, indicated that the export slowdown was not necessarily due to extraneous factors like the East Asian meltdown and export contraction.

"There must be some other issues", he said.

He added that "the new policy has attempted to address these issues so as to ameliorate them and to give a critical push to exports."

Hegde said that during the current fiscal, exports of agriculture and allied products would get focussed attention. Referring to the bumper foodgrain crop,he said "we require a coordinated effort for exporting the surplus and have to concentrate on many such sectors for dynamic growth in exports."Speaking at the seminar, commerce secretary PP Prabhu said that the government was planning to have interactions with the 11 export promotion councils in the next one month or so and would fix the export targets accordingly.

Replying to questions concerning special import licences (SILs), which may see a rise in premium following changes in the exim policy,Prabhu said the short-term special import licences (SIL) premiums should not be treated as incentives by exporters. The whole list would go in a couple of years.

FICCI president Sudhir Jalan asked for the evolution of a realistic exchange rate.

He added that a depreciation of the rupee by seven to 10 per cent would be ideal to shore up exports.