The ministry is also preparing strategy papers on select industries to promote export in those sectors. The industries include, agriculture products, electronics and software, marine products, service sectors like tourism, hotel industry and ports. Each strategic paper will address the bottlenecks in these sectors and ways to tackle them.

In an exclusive interview with The Financial Express, Anil Swarup, export commissioner, ministry of commerce, said the ministry is trying to create an institutional mechanism at the state level to tackle the gamut of export-related bottlenecks. "The UP government has agreed to set up the agency. Others are likely to follow soon,"he said. "As a pilot project, the ministry's dialogue with the UP government has reached an advanced level for creating such an institution," Swarup said.

Unlike the Centre, state governments do not have specilaised agency to look into exports, hence the need to create one, he said. "The issues the special agency can tackle include sales tax, law and order, labour, power, and infrastructural facilities," he said, adding that except providing finance the agency will be in a position to address any problems faced by exporters.

He said the ministry is trying to evolve qualitative changes, both substantive and procedural, to boost exports. "After announcing the new exim policy dealing with the overall policy framework, the ministry is trying to evolve product-specific strategy for pushing up export growth," Swarup said.

The export commissioner said more products would be included in export promotion capital goods (EPCG) scheme by lowering the threshold limit, while the restrictive list will be revised toget oilseeds and pulses available for free trade.

The ministry's long-term strategy has been to compensate exporters for different domestic duties in order to be price competitive and provide raw materials, including capital goods, at international competitive prices so that exporters get a sound platform to perform.

Admitting that the recent the devaluation of currencies of south-east Asian countries had posed formidable problem for the country's exports, Swarup said that things have improved of late. "I feel that taking the rupee devaluation route for gaining export is always a short-term measure," he said, adding that the ministry is focussing on long-term strategies to boost exports.

Speaking about the recent sanctions against India by the US and Japan in the wake of the nuclear tests, Swarup said that these were basically investment-related issues and not trade-related issues. The US and Japan are India's largest and third largest trade partner with a trade transaction of $ 6 billion and $2.5billion. "I do not think there is any problem in expanding that," Swarup said.