Piyush Goyal, Union Minister of Commerce & Industry, Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution and Textiles, has said that the upcoming G20 Summit holds significant importance for global trade, for attracting investments to India and for enhancing India’s role in multi-lateral organizations. Goyal said this while addressing the Northern Regional Export Excellence Award function of Federation of Indian Export Organisation (FIEO) in New Delhi on Tuesday..

Expressing confidence that India’s presidency will be recognized and remembered for many years as an action oriented Summit where significant deliverables were offered to the world, Goyal noted that the recent G20 Trade Ministers’ meet in Jaipur gave a Call of Action through which Indian MSME sector will get a significant access to information, which will help them become globally successful exporters.

“We are looking at mapping global value chains so that Indian traders can play a greater role in global value chains and we also focussed on digitisation of trade documentation,” he added. He noted that India will have almost 90 percent of global GDP being represented in New Delhi at the G20 Summit in a few days.

Goyal said that after a long period of a stagnation in exports, India broke the ceiling and crossed 450 billion dollars of merchandise exports in 2022-23. Admitting that the current year does show some challenges with the geopolitical situation and the impact of that which we are seeing in certain sectors like petroleum, gems and textiles, he expressed confidence that our exporters have the ability and agility to overcome adverse situations.

He said that we are living in a nation full of pride, a nation full of talent, a nation which is being recognized across the world as the future engine of world economic growth. India has celebrated three major achievements in the recent days – Chandrayaan mission, in sports in the form of wins in javelin and chess and the successful engagements in Ministerial Meetings in G20, he said.

Goyal quoted Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying “Business can transform potential into prosperity, obstacles into opportunity, aspirations into achievements, small or big, global or local, it can ensure progress for everyone.” This is truly a great vote of confidence in our business community, he said. “You are being recognized and respected for the work that you do and your contribution in our journey towards becoming a developed nation is being recognized and applauded,” he added.

The Commerce and Industry Minister said that India was one of the few nations who showed resilience and responsibility during the pandemic. “We also showed sensitivity to the developing world by providing them vaccines, to many of them free of charge. We showed that under Prime Minister Modi’s astute leadership we will perform and lead global growth,” he said.

Goyal said that Prime Minister Modi has described India as a nation of opportunities. For the next 30 years, India will continue to have a young population and we will add 30 trillion dollars to become a 35 trillion economy by 2047, he said, adding that our young, aspirational demography will create a demand for us. Now even the sky is not the limit for us, he said, alluding to India’s successful space mission.

“We are investing huge amounts of money on infrastructure so that we can get lower logistics cost, so that we can get seamless movement of goods and services and we are ensuring that we get a corruption free environment,” Goyal said, adding that “no power can stop India’s growth now.”

The target for 2030 is to have 1 trillion dollars of goods exports and 1 trillion dollars of service exports and this will be met with your hard work and contributions, Goyal added. He informed the gathering that India is trying to unlock newer markets through FTAs, encouraging investments in modern technology, looking for digitisation and technology adaptation to become more acceptable to the world for high quality goods and services so that the true potential of India can be harnessed.

“We should focus on quality, sustainability and innovation and if we keep these in our priority, the world is looking up to India and wants to deal and trade with India and to partner with us in our growth story,” he concluded.