Health, education to come under services council

The proposed services export promotion council will cover services such as education, accountancy and health service exports.

These services, at present, do not come under the purview of any dedicated service export policy. It will, therefore, not include information technology.

An inter-ministerial task force to recommend modalities for the setting up of the council headed by Director General of Foreign Trade K T Chacko has recommended bringing those service sectors under the purview of the new council that require hand holding or policy support from the government.

The task force includes representatives of industry chambers Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Confederation of Indian Industry and Federation of Indian Export Organisation besides officials from finance, health, education and information technology ministries.

The task force, which is expected to submit its report shortly, has also emphasised the need for expanding the scope of data collection on service exports by the Reserve Bank of India.

The RBI, which at present deals with services such as travel, transportation, insurance and software, is working on expanding the scope of work to around 12-13 services.

The Foreign Trade Policy, announced in August 2004, had stated that in view of the increasing significance of service exports, the government would set up an export promotion council dedicated to services.

There are 13 services which have been identified by the commerce ministry as significant in terms of service exports, which include medical services, project exports, education and financial services like banking, insurance and securitisation, tourism, consultancy services and computer related services.

According to the latest RBI data, service exports during the first quarter of the current fiscal were $3193 million, against $999 million during April-June 2003.