Piyush Goyal unveils overhaul plan for commerce department

NEW DELHI: A major overhaul plan for the commerce department was unveiled on Tuesday with eight focus areas, including a dedicated trade promotion body and intake of private sector talent in the Indian Trade Service, to make it "future ready" and help achieve the $2-trillion export target by 2030.
Commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal, who released a report prepared by Boston Consulting Group, said the restructuring of the department will strengthen the negotiations' capability at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and bilateral free trade agreements, centralisation and digitisation of trade facilitation processes and rehauling the data analytics ecosystem.
Goyal said Indian missions will have a stronger role in trade promotion, market intelligence to boost exports. The minister said the aim is to increase the country's share in global exports and create jobs. Goyal said inter-ministerial discussions will be held for inputs before the plan is ready for rollout. He also made it clear that there would not be any reduction in manpower in the ministry due to the recasting but may go up as new verticals are created.
The dedicated trade promotion body will drive overall strategy, export targets and execution. The plan also includes strengthening brand India to reinforce the country's trade priorities. Trade negotiations would be strengthened through multi-skilled negotiations teams and separation between bilateral and WTO negotiations. Trade facilitation processes would be centralised and digitised to drive ease of compliance and scheme administration.
Data and analytics ecosystem would be overhauled through centralised data management and embedded analytics capabilities in different wings. There would be increased intake and private sector talent would be encouraged as part of plans to shore up capacity building and drive specialisation in the Indian Trade Service.
The need to revamp the system was led by emerging opportunity owing to shifts in global trade dynamics like rapid growth of services and disruptive potential of climate change and also the need to proactively develop exports and build the country's brand in global markets.