The mango export season has started in Maharashtra, with 28 tonnes of the fruit leaving for American and Australian shores. Officers of the Maharashtra State Agricultural Marketing Board (MSAMB) said they are aiming for a 15-20 per cent increase compared to last year’s exports. This year, Board officials have set a target of 800 tonnes of exports for US markets.

 

 

Alphonso mangoes form a substantial chunk of India’s export basket as the fruit is in great demand in many markets abroad. Last year, 49,180.46 tonnes of mangoes were exported from India, with majority of the produce coming from orchards in Maharashtra.

 

MSAMB officals said the 28 tonnes of mangoes, meant for American and Australian markets, have been treated in an irradiation facility in Vashi. Similarly, 7.5 tonnes of mangoes for Russian and New Zealand markets have received the vapour heat treatment.

 

In order to facilitate exports, the MSAMB recently organised two workshops in Konkan for farmers, as well as for buyers and sellers.

Workshops were also conducted on how to produce export-quality fruits.

Consul general of China in Kolkata, Zha Liyou said on Tuesday that his country is keen on balanced trade with India as it is always beneficial and inclusive. 

 

There is greater need for boosting trade and investment between the two countries, he said on economic ties between the two countries. 

 

We do not want to have trade deficit with India. We want a bilateral balanced trade as it is always mutually inclusive, he told the Bharat Chamber of Commerce here 

 

Liyou said that Yunan Provincial Investment Infrastructure would come to West Bengal after the Lok Sabha election to discuss possible investment avenues between Kunming and Kolkata, the sister cities. 

 

Besides, there is great need for creating a good environment through more people to people contact. 

 

Talking about the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) proposed by China, Liyou said it is directed by a mutually constructed and shared vision and China is a great supporter for multilateralism. 

The commerce ministry has laid down a procedure for import of a few varieties of pulses for the current fiscal and has invited applications from millers. 

 

According to the ministry's foreign trade arm DGFT, millers and refiners of these pulses need licence for imports. 

 

Procedure for import of 2 lakh tonne pigeon peas/toor dal, 1.5 lakh tonne urad dal, 1.5 lakh tonne moong dal and 1.5 lakh tonne peas (including yellow peas, green peas, dun peas, and kaspa peas) is laid down, directorate general of foreign trade (DGFT) has said in a notice. 

 

As per the procedure, for each refining/processing unit, applicants will have to provide self-certified copy of a document indicating its refining/ processing capacity. 

 

This document should be issued by a central, state or district authority. 

 

 The absence of the document will render the application liable for rejection, it said. 

 

 The licence holders shall submit monthly statements indicating the actual arrival of shipments at the Indian ports, it added. 

 

The Container Corporation of India (CONCOR) of the Ministry of Railways has achieved 43.32 million tonnes of cargo by rail, 8.4% higher than the previous year 2017-18 of 39.97 million tonnes, thereby clocking the highest ever in its history.

 

There has also been a 30% increase in double stack trains from 2,303 trains to around 3,000 trains in 2018-19, said Chairman and Managing Director Kalyana Raman at a press conference here on Wednesday along with Directors Sanjay Swarup and Manoj Kumar Dubey and General Manager K. Sambasiva Rao.

 

Giving details of the performance in the just-concluded financial year, he said along with Krishnapatnam, three terminals have been commissioned, including two at Bodhjungnagar (Tripura) and Barhi (Haryana), while a distribution logistics was commissioned in Chennai in March last week. With this, the company has a presence across the country with 83 terminals in total.

 

The CONCOR also entered the coastal shipping arena with the first voyage flagged off earlier this year in January from Kandla Port to Tuticorin Port.

 

A container train service was started to Bangladesh, which was flagged off from Majerhat towards Banglabandhu West and a new transit route was opened to Nepal via Batnaha-Joghani-Biratnagar with the first train flagged off from Kolkata Port in April last. Mr. Raman said as part of their global outreach strategy, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed with Russia for providing logistics services and another with Egypt. Distribution logistics, integrated logistics and manufacturing zone were the new areas of diversification.

The National Dairy Development Board (NDDB)’s laboratory Centre for Analysis & Learning in Livestock & Food (CALF) has been recognised as a National Reference Laboratory or NRL for dairy & dairy products by the Food Safety & Standards Authority of India (FSSAI).

 

Following the order from FSSAI, CALF has become the only National Reference Laboratory in India for Milk & Milk products. It was already a Referral Lab (RL) of FSSAI for different analysis.

 

A statement from NDDB said, CALF’s nomination as NRL for dairy & dairy products gives an opportunity to improve methods of testing of dairy products, as numerous tests are done on a daily basis in dairy products. The results of these tests further influence the upshot, as to whether or not it complies with legislation for the industry.

 

Centre for Analysis & Learning in Livestock and Food will work on harmonization and develop methods for routine testing procedures, to attain a higher level of confidence in comparability of results. As an NRL, CALF will be a knowledge & resource centre for information on analytical science in milk as well as milk products.

 

The USA has invested great efforts to put in place the new Indo-Pacific strategy. But this strategy is nothing new and has been in works under previous administration in the US. The strategy of the Trump administration is mainly driven by the regional competition with China and the strategy tend to benefit from the Sino-Indian differences. 

 

In the words of the Trump administration, the Indo-Pacific designates a region that extends from the Indian shores to the Pacific coast of the United States. It has became a major element of American rhetoric towards Asia after a first speech by then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on the U.S.-Indian relationship in October 2017 at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But beyond the rhetoric of a “free and open” Indo-Pacific, US speeches and documents are aimed at countering the China’s expansion in the region through partnership with India based on differences between Delhi and Beijing on a host of issues. 

 

However, this strategy need not work towards India’s benefits, according to experts and may even contribute to wider Indo-China tensions. The strategy of Washington may largely benefit Americans. The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy released in 2017 described a “geopolitical competition between free and repressive visions of world order” and denounced how China seeks to displace the United States in the Indo-Pacific region, expand the reaches of its state-driven economic model, and reorder the region in its favor. This was followed a few months later by the rebranding of the emblematic U.S. Pacific Command into the Indo-Pacific Command, a symbolic measure that was read in the region as an indicator that the Indo-Pacific strategy was primarily a military enterprise aiming at containing China’s expansion in both regions. This permanent reference to Chinese expansion conflicts with the simultaneous promotion of American partnerships to the region. At the Shangri-La Summit of 2018, then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis assured his Asian counterparts that America does not ask any country to choose between the United States and China. In a speech to the APEC CEO Summit in November 2018, Vice President Mike Pence might have affirmed that the Indo-Pacific strategy was an inclusive one, but he went into details about Chinese opaque loans that lead to staggering debt. He clearly stated to his Asian audience “the United States offers a better option, writes JEAN-LOUP SAMAAN in a recent article titled ‘CONFRONTING THE FLAWS IN AMERICA’S INDO-PACIFIC STRATEGY’ published in website War on the Rocks. 

The meeting of 25 WTO member countries on May 13-14 here is expected to come out with a declaration on critical issues including 'special and differential treatment' for developing nations and impasse over the appointment of members to the appellate body of dispute settlement, sources said. The other issues that could figure in the meeting include fishery subsidies and public stockholding in agriculture, they said.

 

India has convened a meeting of 25 developing member nations of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) on May 13-14 here.

 

The meet assumes significance as several countries are raising questions over the relevance of the Geneva-based global trade body. Many countries are also taking protectionist measures, impacting global trade.

The idea of the meeting is to discuss these matters in detail and 'special and differential treatment' (S&D) is the core issue which would be deliberated upon, one of the sources said.

 

As part of reforms at the WTO, the US wants the formulation of some guidelines that countries with high economic growth are prevented from taking benefits of S&D, which is meant for developing and poor nations.

 

The S&D allows developing countries to enjoy certain benefits including taking longer time periods for implementing agreements and binding commitments, and measures to increase trading opportunities for them.

 

Currently, any WTO member can designate itself as a developing country and avail these benefits.

 

The US has submitted its suggestions to the WTO which states that self-declaration puts the WTO on a path to failed negotiations and it is also a path to institutional irrelevance.

 

India is of the view that the matter needs to be negotiated comprehensively in the WTO and a consensus-based decision needs to be taken on S&D.

SMEs or small and medium enterprises account for near 40 per cent of India’s total export volumes but are some of the most underserved when it comes to working capital provisions. Demands for collateral, long processing times, heavy paperwork burden, and other such factors contribute towards making working capital highly inaccessible for SMEs. Institutions like factoring firms and NBFCs offer alternative financing solutions; however, many SME exporters are unaware of these offerings. At a time when the Modi government is seriously thinking to enhance the export via SMEs these issues need an urgent address, say SME experts.

 

Pressing for awareness among the SMEs for finding alternatives to credit capital Rajeev Chawla, Chairman, IamSMEofIndia told Zee Business, "Invoice factoring is a process of procuring finance by selling the invoices of your transactions to a third party known as the factor. Based on your transaction history and other parameters, the factor gives the seller (the exporter) a credit line which they can then use to finance further transactions to other buyers (importers). In most cases, the seller gets 80 per cent of their invoice value upfront from the factor (often without the need for collateral), and the remaining 20 per cent — minus the factor’s fees and interest — after the buyer transfers the value of the invoice to the factor.