Agri exports grow 6.04% y-o-y in last 10 months to $43.37 billion

Union Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Anupriya Patel gave the information in a written reply to a query in Lok Sabha.

The agricultural exports during April 2021 to January 2022 stood at $40.90 billion. During the entire financial year 2021-22, India’s agricultural export touched the highest ever level of $50.21 billion, according to the correspondence.

Rise in agricultural exports improves realisations for farmers and has a positive impact on their income. In order to ensure that the farmers benefit from exports, the government has launched a Farmer Connect Portal for providing a platform for Farmer Producer Organisations/Companies (FPOs/FPCs) and cooperatives to directly interact with exporters.

The government has taken several steps at State and District level to promote agriculture exports.

State specific Action Plans have been prepared and State Level Monitoring Committees (SLMCs), Nodal Agencies for agricultural exports and Cluster Level Committees have been formed in several states.

The government is utilising the District as Export Hub (DEH) initiative to achieve the objectives of Agriculture Export Policy (AEP).

Under the DEH initiative, products including agricultural and processed food products with export potential have been identified in all 733 districts across the country. State Export Strategy has been prepared in 28 States/UTs.

The Agricultural & Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) is constantly engaged in export promotion activities for agricultural & processed food products and has played an important role.

APEDA implements the ‘Agriculture & Processed Food Products Export Promotion Scheme’.

Various developmental activities are undertaken and assistance to exporters is provided under different components of the scheme viz. Infrastructure Development, Market Development and Quality Development.

APEDA has also been collaborating with the Indian Missions abroad for participating in various international trade fairs and exhibitions, organising virtual trade fairs, buyer-seller meets and export promotion of GI products.

APEDA has also facilitated trial shipments for new products with export potential and for new destinations.

To address the issue of stakeholders’ participation in the decision-making process for export promotion activities, the Department of Commerce has established Export Promotion Forums (EPFs) for individual products under the aegis of the APEDA.

The EPFs have representation from trade/industry, line ministries/departments, regulatory agencies, research institutes, state governments etc.

In all 9 EPFs have been formed for rice, banana, grapes, mango, onion, dairy products, nutri-cereals, pomegranate and floriculture respectively.

APEDA has also played an important role in opening up of new markets for agricultural products in the recent past such as Canada, China, South Korea, Taiwan, Portugal, Indonesia, Iran etc.

APEDA has been organising capacity building/training programs in the Agri-export  clusters and States in association with the State Departments, State Agriculture Universities, and Krishi Vikas Kendras for farmers, farmer-producer organizations (FPOs), and exporters in order to provide export-market linkage to the farmer groups and to facilitate entrepreneurs in becoming prospective exporters.

APEDA has also made efforts to establish synergy with the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Ministry of Food Processing Industries, Department of Animal Husbandry & Dairying and Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) to ensure optimum utilization of resources for the development of agriculture exports.