Trade, import, and export for MSMEs: The value of MSME products exported in FY21 registered a year-on-year (YoY) drop of 7.6 per cent amid the Covid pandemic in comparison to the 1.8 per cent decline in FY20. Data from the Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCI&S), Kolkata, showed that the export of MSME related products in FY19 was worth $158.76 billion that dropped to $155.91 billion in FY20 and further to $143.99 billion in FY21. Importantly, the share of MSME exports to India’s total export value continued to hover around 49 per cent – from 48.10 per cent in FY19 to 49.75 per cent in FY20 and 49.35 per cent in FY21.
The data was shared by Minister of State for Commerce and Industry ministry Anupriya Patel in Rajya Sabha on Friday. The provisional data for the current financial year showed that $90.80 billion worth of MSME related products were exported till September with a share of 45.80 per cent in $198.26 billion of total exports from the country during the April-September period.
The growth in export share of MSMEs in FY22 would be important to note as the government has been aiming at increasing the current share to 60 per cent. Former MSME Minister Nitin Gadkari had said last year at public forums that the government had aimed to increase the export share by 12 per cent in five years along with a jump in contribution to the gross domestic product from around 30 per cent to 50 per cent and additional 5 crore jobs in the MSME sector.
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“To enhance exports and ensure localisation, it is essential to make the country a global manufacturing powerhouse by improving India’s manufacturing base. This can be achieved by scaling up India’s competitive advantage or augmenting the competitiveness of MSMEs and make India a preferred destination for manufacturing for the world,” MSME Minister Narayan Rane had said in September at a public event.
India is targetting $400 billion worth of exports in the current FY and $1 trillion by FY27. The minister had said that MSMEs would help drive the country’s export targets. In September this year, the government had announced that it will release Rs 56,027 crore in the current financial year against pending export incentives due to over 45,000 exporters, around 98 per cent of which were small exporters in the MSME category. The incentives due to exporters belonged to different export promotion schemes such as MEIS, SEIS, RoSL, RoSCTL, other scrip-based schemes relating to earlier policies, and the remission support for RoDTEP and RoSCTL schemes for exports made in the fourth quarter of FY21.