India has amended its duty-free market access scheme for African nations to help boost trade between the two regions, industry body CII said today.

“In order to expand trade with Africa, India had recently amended its Duty Free Tariff Preference (DFTP) scheme to cover around 98 per cent of the tariff lines,” CII said, quoting Commerce Secretary Rajeev Kher.

Under the scheme, import of most products from least developed nations to India attract lower duties.

The government is in the process of disseminating this information to all the nations.

The government is also considering expanding and augmenting the Lines of Credit extended to Africa, Kher said.

Kher was addressing the representatives of Regional Economic Communities in Africa late evening yesterday.

Highlighting growth in India-Africa trade relationship, Kher said it has increased 10-fold over the past 10 years.

Further, he also sought cooperation of African countries at the WTO on the issue of food security.

Meanwhile in a separate statement, Engineering Export Promotion Council (EEPC) said that India and Africa need to resolve issues like connectivity and infrastructural bottlenecks to reach the mutual trade target of USD 100 billion by the end of 2015 from the present level of about USD 70 billion.

These issues were highlighted at a meeting between the EEPC members, senior officials of the Commerce Ministry and diplomats from the African countries here today.

Engineering exports to Africa stood at about USD 10-12 billion, which is about one-third of India’s total exports to the continent.

“We are keen on further engaging not only with top destinations like South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt etc but also several other countries in the region, rich in natural resources,” EEPC India Chairman Anupam Shah said.

 

See also: Can India’s Duty-Free Scheme foster Trade and Development in African Least Developed Countries? Published in GREAT Insights Volume 3, Issue 4 (April 2014)