With rise in trade standoff between nations at multilateral forums like the WTO (World Trade Organization), the Indian government intends to focus on government-to-government businesses amid slowdown fears in export.

Particularly with respect to the agri exports, the Indian government felt that it had great opportunities in many regions, including East Asia, Northern Africa and West Asia (or the Gulf).

It is pertinent to mention here that recently, the UAE held talks with the Indian government for making India a food hub for their need.

“This idea also got a boost, as several of the countries recently floated tenders for the procurement of food and the Indian government intends to participate,” said officials of the department of commerce and trade.

The department is eying non-basmati rice and sugar export to countries like Indonesia and the Philippines in East Asia and Egypt, which floated a tender for the procurement of sugar recently.

Besides, other countries are floating tender for procurement of food as well. For instance, Iraq has recently shown interest in procuring wheat from India.

The Indian government, according to sources, intends to participate in such tenders to secure agri exports to such countries.

It is pertinent to mention here that agriculture has been identified as one of the sectors that will help overall Indian export surpass $400 billion in the next five years, which stood at $390 billion last year.

Also, the government has announced an extensive agri export policy to double agricultural exports from the present $30 billion to $60 billion by 2022, and reach $100 billion in the next few years.

The plan also includes diversification of the export basket, destinations and boost high value and value-added agricultural exports.

The policy also focus on perishables, novel, indigenous, organic, ethnic and non-traditional agri products, and the use of institutional mechanisms for pursuing market access.