Promoting agricultural exports is a continuous process. To promote the agricultural exports, the government has introduced a comprehensive agriculture export policy, aimed at harnessing the export potential of Indian agriculture, through suitable policy instruments, to make India a global power in agriculture, and raise farmers’ income.

Inter alia, the objectives of the Agriculture Export Policy are as under:

To diversify our export basket, destinations and boost high value- and value-added agricultural exports, including focus on perishables
To promote novel, indigenous, organic, ethnic, traditional and non-traditional agri product exports
To provide an institutional mechanism for pursuing market access, tackling barriers and dealing with sanitary and phytosanitary issues
To strive to double India’s share in world agri exports by integrating with global value chains
Enable farmers to get benefit of export opportunities in overseas market
The government has also brought out a new Central Sector Scheme, Transport and Marketing Assistance for Specified Agriculture Products, for providing assistance for the international component of freight, to mitigate the freight disadvantage for the export of agriculture products, and marketing of agricultural products.

The Department of Commerce also has several schemes to promote exports, including exports of agricultural products, viz Trade Infrastructure for Export Scheme (TIES), Market Access Initiatives (MAI) Scheme, Merchandise Exports from India Scheme (MEIS), etc.

In addition, assistance to the exporters of agricultural products is also available under the export promotion schemes of the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA), the Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA), Tobacco Board, Tea Board, Coffee Board, Rubber Board and Spices Board.

This information was given by commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal, in a written reply in the Lok Sabha recently.