MUMBAI : The Union Minister for Textiles, Commerce and Industry, and Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Shri Piyush Goyal attended the Export Awards function organized by The Synthetic & Rayon Textiles Export Promotion Council (SRTEPC) in Mumbai recently.

Addressing the industry, the Commerce and Industry and Textiles Minister said that “we have to study each Free Trade Agreement and understand requirements of other countries better. “Export Promotion Councils should open offices in other countries, such as in locations like Dubai. We have to think out-of-the-box.”

The Minister told the industry that we need to give special attention to quality. “The time has come for our quality to be the best in the world. This is the demand of consumers in India and across the world as well. The time for coming out with two different types of quality – domestic quality and export quality – is over. 2,000 products will come under Quality Control soon. We need to stop using low-quality products. We need to increase our scale, focus on quality.”

The Minister observed that it is perhaps for the first time that the Prime Minister himself met with Export Promotion Councils and discussed the way forward including export targets. “Following last year’s record exports, this year, based on figures available till now, we are confident of crossing 750 billion dollars of exports.” The Minister said that it is a matter of pride for us that despite global headwinds, we would be reaching this target.

The Minister said that unlike games like cricket, the state of business and industry is now such that the paradigm is one of win-win. “The Trade Agreement between India and Australia is a unity agreement, the two economies are very complementary. While Australia imports most manufactured goods, we get many of our raw materials like critical minerals from Australia. There is an investment opportunity for processing lithium and other rare earths and minerals, since the market for them is growing.”