Merchandise exports in September rose to $33.44 billion, higher by 21.35 percent Y-o-Y, according to official date released last week. In the quarter ending September, exports registered $101.89 billion. In the first six months of the current financial year, exports touched $197 billion. These figures are encouraging, particularly in the background of the export target of $400 billion for the financial year. Meanwhile, there are more good news for the sector.

The Centre on Wednesday approved capital infusion of Rs 4,400 crore to the ECGC. The investments will be made from FY2021-2022 to FY2025-2026. This will increase underwriting capacity of ECGC to support more exports. This move is encouraging as ECGC’s products support around 30 percent of India's merchandise exports. These days, while there is exports growth, growth in export credit is not that encouraging, and we hope better days ahead.

In another positive development, the Centre approved continuation of the National Export Insurance Account scheme with infusion of Rs 1,650 crore over 5 years. Experts point out that this infusion in the form of grant-in-aid will help project exporters to tap huge potential of project exports in focus markets. The corpus will enhance the underwriting capacity of the Trust and as a result it is expected to boost projects exports and domestic manufacturing in a big way.

In yet another encouraging development, the government extended the timeline of Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme till March 31, 2022. Under the scheme, relief has been extended to over 1.15 crore MSMEs and businesses till now and as on 24th September 2021, loans sanctioned have crossed Rs. 2.86 lakh crore. Also, the last date of disbursement under the scheme has been extended to June, 2022. These are welcome developments.

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