The Union Commerce Ministry has announced the setting up of a three member in-house committee to reorient and fine-tune the functioning of the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT). The Committee is headed by P.P. Prabhu, former Commerce Secretary and has Shyamal Ghosh, former Telecom Secretary and S. B. Mahapatra, Textile Secretary (both former DGFTs), as its members.

Announcing this at the inaugural function of a 2-day meeting of DGFT Port Officers which began in New Delhi on September 10, 2002 Murasoli Maran, Union Minister of Commerce & Industry, said that the committee would aim at "making the process speedy, simple and transparent and making it more export-friendly so that even an inexperienced village artisan can export without difficulties and bureaucratic impediments."

The decision to set up the committee has come in the light of the present liberalised trade regime which demands simplification and elimination of layers of decision making, and ensure greater transparency, Maran said.

Dipak Chatterjee, Commerce Secretary and L. Mansingh, DGFT were present on the occasion along with Anup Pujari, Additional DGFT and other senior officers of the DGFT including the Port Officers. Describing the two-day interaction as a part of a mid-term analysis of the current Exim Policy with a view to sustaining and further accelerating exports, Maran said that on the basis of the trends so far he was confident that the export growth target of 12% set for the current year 2002-03 would be achieved.

The minister said that the Port Officers had a key role to play in attaining the country's trade goals and in the implementation of all export promotion measures, including schemes such as like Assistance to States for Infrastructural Development for Exports (ASIDE), which seeks to actively involve the State governments in exports promotion. Referring to the EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) Scheme as a critical area, the minister complimented the Port Officers for having successfully implemented the one-day licensing scheme and added that the next step would be on-line payment and use of digital signatures to mark the successful culmination of computerisation of the entire gamut of operations of the DGFT. He further assured that Port Officers would be consulted while formulating the Exim Policy.

Mansingh pointed out that the basic objective of the two-day meeting was to take stock of the implementation of the current Exim Policy and also to go through all the parameters of trade through Ports by way of simplifying procedures so as to achieve the target of doubling the country's exports by the year 2007. He assured that the DGFT would strive to achieve the export target set for the current year. Mansingh described the Port Officers as the operating arm of the Ministry and informed that this mid-term interaction would henceforth be a regular feature.