But the variety of industrial consumer goods freed should not be underestimated: shaving cream and toilet soap, razors, textile materials and knitting machines. This is a preliminary exercise in freeing consumer goods imports and shortening the negative list. The three-week old government of which Hegde is a member did not get time to take a view on liberalisation of consumer goods import. Besides, there is the full-fledged budget round the corner to hone tariffs. The important point is that a chauvinistic view against consumer goods imports has been eschewed.Little quarter has been yielded to the Rashtriya Jagaran March. Despite brave noises against WTO's unfair deal with India, the new government is clearly wary of jumping the gun. Obviously, it prefers to negotiate to smoothen the rough edges of the agreement with WTO in due season. Has Hegde been soft in liberalising consumer goods? Not exactly. The depreciating rupee has conferred an advantage on domestic producers of consumer goods, including multinationals.

It is time they faced some competition. While introducing the new exim policy, the commerce minister has put the exchange rate policy in perspective. Since the exchange rate is a floating rate determined by market forces, he has said, "there is no fixed rate which could be considered the correct rate". Hegde is no believer in tampering with the exchange rate to make the rupee strong (a la Sushma Swaraj). He has also ruled out rapid depreciation to boost exports: "the effect would vary amongst export sectors, depending on import intensity, valueaddition, etc", he has explained. The exchange rate will have to be managed, however, balancing the needs of exporters as also other "macroeconomic requirements for maintaining price stability". A sensible proposition. Hegde seeks other remedies for erosion of export competitiveness: cumbersome procedures, increased transaction costs, infrastructural bottlenecks. He can do little about the last. He proposes to strengthen the duty entitlement pass book scheme, introduced last year. There will be new DEPB rates to take care of special customs duty. The export promotion capital goods scheme has been liberalised. The entire approach to import-based export is being changed.

The value addition norm for export is being dropped for actual users. Hegde calls this a trust-based system. Theoretically, the exporter knows the optimum level of value addition required to export at a profit. The trouble is that the exporter is also subject to the pull of the domestic market. This was the reason why Chidambaram's VABALwent berserk. It will be interesting to see how Hegde shapes the trust-based system.

He proposes to hold a dialogue with corporates. The top 500 of them derive less than ten per cent of their sales from export. Hegde's target is to get them to export 20 per cent. He may not able to get results the way Japan's MITI did, but his effort will be worthwhile if he gets an insight into why Indian industry is unable to take advantage of the massive international market. He has also viewed with sympathy the problems of small scale units. They import raw materials in small quantities; private bonded warehouses are therefore to be brought into the picture.

They will be allowed to supply even items on the negative list to holders of advance licence. Finally, Hegde admits that following liberalisation of quantitative restrictions, dumping has increased. So the directorate of anti-dumping and allied duties is to be strengthened. The proposed facilitation cell should help industry get the data to file complaints. Thisshould address industry's grievance that the government alone has the machinery to ferret out data on how prices are manipulated.