With France “at war” with terrorists, the Engineering Export Promotion Council is keeping its fingers crossed as France was the backbone of India’s engineering exports to Europe.
With France “at war” with terrorists, the Engineering Export Promotion Council is keeping its fingers crossed as France was the backbone of India’s engineering exports to Europe.
In October, exports of engineering items rose 30.27 per cent even when India’s overall engineering exports dropped by 11.62 per cent during the month, an EEPC India study released during the ongoing India Engineering Sourcing Show in Mumbai, noted.
“What was more encouraging was the fact that the turnaround in the exports to France came riding on the back of value added products like automobiles, aircraft parts, electrical machinery and components and industrial machinery,” T. S. Bhasin, chairman of EEPC India, the apex organisation of engineering exporters said.
Despite negative trends in the previous few months (September, August and July), the cumulative data for shipments to France remained positive at about six per cent from $587.34 million during April-October 2014-15 to $622.24 million for the seven months of the current fiscal.
Mr Bhasin observed that given the fact that the entire commodity pack, mainly the metals, have seen a sharp decline in valuations in the world market, “there is not much of a choice for India but to go in for the value-added products and exports to France were significant for this.
“However, with the condemnable terror attacks, we are keeping our fingers crossed hoping the business sentiment there is not affected in November and subsequent months,” he said.
