Continuous positive growth since last five months in the current fiscal provides good hope that the export sector is in the path of revival, Regional Chairman of Federation of India Exporters Organisation (FIEO) Southern Region, A. Shaktivel said today.

Reacting to country’s export performance data for the month of January last, Shaktivel said that the positive growth, coming after two years of consecutive negative growth, was the result of various measures taken by the Government including special packages for textile and leather sector, interest equalisation scheme announced for five years.

After lowest growth during 2016, the world trade expected to be better during 2017 and 2018 especially the markets of emerging economies. However, globally prices of all products were coming down and there was a big challenge for Indian manufacturing products for continuing competitive especially labour oriented products like textiles and garments, Leather, Engineering, he said.

Shaktivel requested the Commerce Ministry to consider present market situation and extend better facilities to the exporters while doing the Midterm review of Foreign Trade Policy.

On the uncertainty surrounding US trade policies, he said that India can compete in the labour intensive sectors like textiles and garments, leather products, engineering, pharma and, handicrafts in US market as the country is having advantages of availability of raw materials and efficient and skilled labour.

There was an urgent need for product diversification for aiming higher export growth, he said and cited the example of textile sector, where emerging demand in the world was for technical textiles sector.

However, India is having only few exporters in this field and FIEO is in talk with various agencies to set up technical textile cluster in Tamil Nadu where common facilities including R and D facilities can be provided to start ups, Shaktivel said.