The annual supplement to the Foreign Trade Policy, which will be released on Friday by Commerce Minister Kamal Nath, is likely to announce a host of measures for exporters to help them tackle the appreciation in rupee
against the dollar as well as to achieve an export target of $200 billion for 2008-09.
Significantly, this is the last year of the Foreign Trade Policy, which was introduced after the UPA government came into power in May 2004. The policy envisaged increasing annual exports to $200 billion in 2008-09 from $52.71 billion in 2002-03.
Sources said the new announcements are likely to include measures to boost exports of high value engineering goods and a set of schemes to support exports from traditional sectors like textiles, handicrafts and leather.
Moreover, coverage of existing schemes like Focus Product and Focus Market, which incentivise export of select products as well as exports to certain countries in Africa, Latin America and the Commonwealth of Independent States nations, is likely to be increased.
This would mean grater allocation for the schemes, which currently stands at Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion).
To incentivise farm exports, more products from