India has unveiled several new measures to boost exports and assist the real estate sector in a bid to boost the economy Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said, amid five consecutive quarters of slowing economic growth, according to Sept. 14 media reports.
The most notable of the measures was a scheme, called Remission of Duties or Taxes on Export Products, replacing the existing Merchandise Exports from India Scheme, the reports said. The country has a target of tripling annual overseas sales to $1 trillion by fiscal 2024 from $303 billion in fiscal 2018, according to Bloomberg News.
Under the new program, the government will reportedly refund taxes and levies for export promotion equivalent to revenue of 500 billion Indian rupees, roughly $7 billion, effective Jan. 1, 2020. This scheme will benefit exporters and the developers of the affordable housing projects by improving their credit and insurance cover as well as providing avenues for last-minute funding, including availing foreign investment, Sitharaman was quoted as saying.
The Indian government also plan to set up a 100 billion rupee fund for affordable housing projects that have stalled, Bloomberg News reported. The Economic Times of India wrote that the government intends to allocate additional 360 billion to 680 billion rupees as export credit under priority sector, along with expansion of the scope of the export credit insurance scheme.
The ET also highlighted other measures, including implementation of a fully automated electronic refund for tax credits under the Goods and Services Tax by the end of September 2019 for speeding up tax refunds and a digitalization boost for all export clearances to reduce time to export.
Additionally, the Indian government plans to organize a large-scale annual shopping festival across four destinations in 2020 to boost exports, the ET added.
Sitharaman said the government would try to not let the revenue loss from the schemes affect its target of narrowing the budget gap to 3.3% of GDP in the year ending March 2020, according to Bloomberg.
As of Sept. 13, US$1 was equivalent to 70.97 Indian rupees.
