WTO-compliant scheme to promote Indian products
in overseas market
S Venkitachalam
New Delhi, Dec 21: The commerce ministry has put in place
a detailed WTO-compliant scheme to promote select individual
branded products in overseas markets by the India Brand Equity
Fund (IBEF) Trust reimbursing the cost in the form of medium
term soft loans to be payable in 5 to 7 years.
The scheme is an offshoot of the market access initiative notified
in the revised export and import policy (2001-02) on March 31.
An empowered committee headed by the commerce secretary has
been set up to sanction proposals/projects under the scheme
that seeks to promote Indian products as well as Indian brands
in the global markets and assist projects for research and
product development.
The scheme will be in addition to the incentives granted
to promote branded products with “Made In India” labels in
the select international departmental stores under the IBEF
which has a corpus of Rs 125 crore.
The promotional expenses involved in projecting India as
a reliable supplier of quality goods will be fully borne by
the scheme or be posed to the IBEF Trust for sanction as a
grant.
The scheme also encourages strategic alliances with local
marketing networks with a view to target and upgrade the products.
Approved cost of research and product development will be
borne up to 25 per cent of the total and balance 75 per cent
by the exporters, export promotion councils (EPCs), trade
promotion organisations concerned.
EPCs have to identify products which have a great export
potential as well as exporters participating in the project
which should aim at intervention on a sustained basis over
the next two or three years and support from the scheme will
decline over the period each year.
India like other countries has been participating in various
international trade fairs. However, such participation is
generally not part of a comprehensive strategy. Thus, it is
required to link participation in trade fairs at identified
potential destinations with effective publicity campaigns,
seminars etc.
The list of select exhibitions/trade fairs will be circulated
in advance to elicit response from industry. This will also
be based on various marketing studies and only such fairs
will be taken up where the response is encouraging.
So far, the empowered committee has sanctioned 15 proposals
and 7 have been approved entailing an expenditure of over
Rs 4 crore during the current year itself. They include Phase-I
of setting up marketing centres in the Netherlands for export
of cut flowers, market surveys to promote plastic consumer
items in the US, setting up of Indiamarts in the US, Canada,
Brazil and Japan for engineering products, promote IT-enabled
services to US and software services to Japan.
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