Services Export Promotion Council (SEPC) gets off the ground

Last year, in August, the government unveiled a five-year Foreign Trade Policy aimed at doubling India’s share of global merchandise trade by 2009 with the thrust on employment generation in semi-urban and rural areas through enhanced export-oriented activities.

The Foreign Trade Policy (2004-09), unveiled by the Commerce and Industry Minister, contained a host of new packages and schemes pertaining to agriculture, services and bio-technology export besides some rationalisation measures to reduce transaction costs. Amongst these was an exclusive Services Export Promotion Council (SEPC) that would be set up in order to map opportunities in key services in major markets and develop strategic market access programmes, including brand building in coordination with players in specific sectors and recognised nodal bodies of the services industry.

Mr Kamal Nath had said that the government would promote the establishment of common facility centres for use by home-based service providers, particularly in areas such as engineering and architectural design, multi-media operations and software developers in state and district-level towns.

In pursuance of the same the Commerce Ministry has now taken the first step towards operationalising the Services Export Promotion Council (SEPC) by appointing Mr L.B. Singhal as its Executive Director. Mr Singhal is currently the Director-General of the Export Promotion Council for EoUs and SEZs and will hold the additional responsibility of ED at SEPC.

When contacted, Mr Singhal told Business Line that the SEPC would be registered as a society under the Societies Registration Act. The council would formulate policies and work out strategies to enhance exports of all major services. "The SEPC would cover all major services including entertainment, health, tourism, education, hospital, consultancy, legal and accountancy services," he said. The council would cover all the 160-odd services notified by the World Trade Organisation except that of computer software services and hotels, which have separate export promotion councils.

Since services account for about 50 per cent of the country's gross domestic product, an export promotion council for this sector was first proposed in the five-year Foreign Trade Policy 2004-09, announced in August last year.

The Commerce Minister had set up an inter-ministerial taskforce headed by the Director-General of Foreign Trade, Mr K.T. Chacko, to work out the modalities for setting up the SEPC including its scope of work and composition. The taskforce has submitted its report.
Meanwhile, a Parliamentary Standing Committee on Commerce has recommended that the Directorate-General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCI&S) should strive to compile data on export of services also.

In its report tabled in Parliament recently, the Committee highlighted that compilation of data on export of services would enable grant of help under the Assistance to States for Infrastructure Development for Exports (ASIDE) scheme on the basis of their performance in the export of services. Currently, the data compiled by the DGCI&S do not capture services exports and only reports on foreign trade in goods. The allocation of assistance under the ASIDE scheme was based on export of goods alone and export of services was not taken into account.

Note: With inputs from The Hindu Business Line