India has a huge scope to move up the global supply chain and improve its share in world exports substantially from just 2% now, despite strong external headwinds, commerce secretary Sunil Barthwal said on Thursday.

He exhorted exporters to shun excessive pessimism caused by the current global turmoil and suggested that there is ample opportunity, even now, to go for high value addition in exported products.

Speaking at a CII event, Barthwal said: “So, we can easily aim for doubling our exports and increasing our exports (share) to 10% over a period of time and these opportunities exist even if somebody is saying that global trade scenario is looking bleak.”

Merchandise exports rose just 4.8% in September from a year before to $35.5 billion, as easing global commodity prices, on top of a slowdown in demand from key markets, continued to hurt order flow for a third straight month. The International Monetary Fund has pegged global trade growth at 4.3% for 2022, down from 10.1% in the previous year. Worse, it has forecast a meagre 2.5% growth rate for 2023. The WTO has put out more conservative estimates, as it warned of a “darkened 2023”. It now expects merchandise trade volumes to grow 3.5% in 2022 and just 1% in 2023. 

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The secretary said negotiations for a proposed free trade agreement with the UK are moving in the right direction, and both sides may reach an agreement soon, although he didn’t give a time line for wrapping up the talks.

Importantly, the secretary had made these comments before Liz Truss announced her decision to quit as Britain’s Prime Minister. Her resignation is bound the impact the pace of negotiations, analysts said.

Barthwal, however, had acknowledged that while negotiators have finalised many things, many aspects of the trade deal are yet to be finalised.

Both the sides had set the Diwali deadline (October 24) to clinch the FTA, which is out of the question now. Asked about a fresh deadline, the secretary said that it hinges on the pace of negotiations.

The India-UK goods trade rose to $17.5 billion in the last fiscal from $13.2 billion in the previous year when the pandemic had affected despatches. India had a merchandise trade surplus of about $3.5 billion with the UK last fiscal. Of course, services account for a dominant share of overall bilateral trade.