Kamal Nath to announce annual FTP supplement

New Delhi, Apr 18: Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath will announce the Annual Supplement to the Foreign Trade Policy tomorrow.

All stakeholder inputs have been taken into account in fine-tuning the elements of the Annual Supplement 2007 to the Foreign Trade Policy (2004-09) through consultations, including in the Board of Trade.

The first-ever comprehensive Foreign Trade Policy (FTP) was announced in August, 2004 with a five year framework (2004-09), which took an integrated view of the overall development of India's foreign trade with a two-fold objective of doubling India's percentage share of global merchandise trade by 2009 and acting as an effective instrument of economic growth by giving a thrust to employment generation.

India's merchandise exports since the announcement of the Policy in August 2004 have gone up significantly. India's exports crossed the landmark figure of 100 billion dollar in 2005-06. India's merchandise exports increased from 53 billion dollar in 2002-03 to 103 billion dollar in 2005-06. Exports in the current year touched 109 billion dollar during April 2006 to February 2007, showing a growth of 22.95 per cent.

The Annual Supplement to the FTP to be announced by the Minister will be available on the Internet and can be accessed at the following website addresses: http://commerce.nic.in and http://dgft.delhi.nic.in as soon as it is released.

In addition, the FTP Annual Supplement etc, will be simultaneously available on the website of the Press Information Bureau (PIB) at: http://pib.nic.in, said an official statement issued here today.

UNI