1.   

Need to boost India-Russia trade: President

Pointing out that the level of bilateral trade and investment between India and Russia was below its potential, President Pranab Mukherjee has called upon the two countries to make concerted efforts to take their two-way trade to USD 20 billion by 2015. Mukherjee, who Tuesday met a parliamentary delegation from the Russian Federation, led by Chairperson of the Council of Russian Federation Valentina I. Matvienko, said India-Russia ties were strong in diverse areas such as energy, defence, space, trade and economics, science and technology, culture and people-to-people ties.

2.   

Economic Survey 2013: India's global ranking for agricultural-exports improves to 10th

India has improved its position in agricultural and food exports to 10th globally, helped by policy impetus, the Economic Survey said today. "In recent years, the policy impetus by the government has provided much required stability to agri exports," said the Survey for 2012-13. However, the document, tabled in Parliament, did not state the earlier ranking. It said that as per World Trade Organization data, global exports and imports of agricultural and food products in 2011 stood at USD 1.66 trillion and USD 1.82 trillion respectively.

3.   

Product and Destination Diversification to Improve Exports

The Government of India continuously monitors the export performance of different sectors and takes need based measures from time to time, keeping in view the financial and overall economic implications. In furtherance of the above strategy, the Government had introduced Focus Market and Focus Products Schemes to encourage exports of traditional as well as non-traditional products and to certain markets. In December, 2012 Government has taken the following measures to boost the exports:

4.   

Sector-specific measures needed to boost exports: Survey

The Economic Survey on Wednesday said urgent sector-specific measures were required to deal with the slowdown in exports which have dipped over the past few months widening the trade deficit including diversification to new markets. The Survey said urgent action was required to deal with issues related to export sectors, especially trade facilitation, taxes and credit and matters pertaining to infrastructure to boost exports. It goes on to mention that the global slowdown has posed serious challenges for India as export growth was negative since May 212.