India can become trusted partner in global supply chains, says Goyal

New Delhi: The world is looking for trusted partners where there is rule of law, transparency in systems, strong judiciary and democratic traditions, and India can become a key player in global supply chains as it provides all of these, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said on Saturday.

He said India has to engage with the world with competitive prices, high quality products, large scale economies of manufacturing, high productivity levels, but "not on the crutches" of government subsidies.

The world is "looking for trusted partners...who have a rule of law, who have transparency in the system, who have a court of appeal, which have vibrant media, strong judiciary and democratic traditions. These are the type of partners the world is looking for and India provides all of these and can become a trusted partner in global supply chains," the minister said in a CII webinar.

Talking about the performance of the country's exports, Goyal said the current numbers of outbound shipments are reflecting signs of significant improvement. He said exports last month reached about 91 per cent level as compared to July 2019. "In fact, in the last 10 days of August, we are at over 95 per cent export level. If you remove oil based and gem and jewellery exports, , we have actually grown in July and in the last 10 days of July, we have grown by above 10 per cent and I think that should be the music to ears for all the analysts who are worried about whether it will be 'U' shape or a 'V' shape recovery.

"But at the same time, we cannot rest on our laurels. This is a short term phenomenon, we all need to work harder to institutionalise this," he added. Goyal also said that for the last 11 days, Indian railways have been running the freight trains at twice the speed of what they were running one year ago.