Piyush Goyal calls upon exporters to think big, be ready for harnessing potential in post-COVID era

New Delhi [India], April 8 (ANI): Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal on Wednesday called upon exporters to think big and be ready to harness opportunities in the post-COVID era.
He made the remarks during interaction through video conferencing with various Export Promotion Councils of the country to assess the ground situation and problems being faced by them in the wake of COVID-19 and subsequent lockdown.
According to an official release, it was the third such meeting since the lockdown in the country.
The minister said India will ramp up its pharma sector to meet global needs.
"We are globally responsible citizens and we will ramp up our pharma sector for global needs. We have a lot of spare pharma products, should we help the world or be greedy? I am proud of the Prime Minister who believes we have a responsibility to the world," Goyal said.
He said there was a need to bring the economy back on track without compromising the health of the people.
Calling upon the exporters to think big, and be ready to harness the opportunity in the post-Covid era, Goyal said "if we improve our quality, build capacity, bring in economies of scale, improve price competitiveness, then we can grow and harness the potential in post-Covid world".
"My personal belief is that when a country engages with big scale and looks at market dominance - automatically you focus on quality, cost of production comes down, productivity improves, efficiency improves," he said.
Citing examples of programmes to built toilets all over the country, providing electricity to all and universal health scheme, Goyal said the government has been thinking big and delivering on the ideas.
He said that even in these challenging times, "we have to keep our priority to keep exports open, so that we don't lose our export market permanently".
He assured that efforts will be made to ensure that urgent and important export orders, stuck for any reason, fructify at the earliest.
The minister said that many geographies are becoming matter of concern.
"There cannot be a better time for export and manufacturing business to bring about change in their thinking. You can focus on areas of your core competency. We should also look at areas where we are strong but our global share is very small. We can continue to improve on such areas," he said.
The Minister said that in this after-COVID world, India can shine, being a vibrant and transparent democracy which works according to the rule of law and has a humanitarian approach.
Citing example of the IT industry, he called upon exporters not to "take the support of the government crutches" and said the winners have a killer instinct that does not let them settle for the second-best.
He urged the exporters to install the Aarogya setu app on their mobiles and popularise it in the fight against the COVID-19.
The minister also called upon them to contribute whole-heartedly towards the PM CARES Fund.
The meeting was attended by Office bearers of FIEO (Federation of Indian Export Organisations), export promotion councils of gem and jewelry, leather, electronics and software, synthetics and rayon, handicrafts, project exports, telecom, textiles, cashew, plastics, sports goods, woolen, oilseeds, silk, engineering exports, services, pharma, chemicals and dyes, forest produce, carpet and allied chemicals. (ANI)