The Department of Commerce, Government of India, in collaboration with NASSCOM, organised an outreach event in Bengaluru on June 9, 2026, to highlight major achievements, reforms and policy initiatives of the Department over the last 12 years. Alongside this outreach, a series of focused industry roundtables were also organized on the theme “Leveraging FTAs for India’s IT/ITeS sector”, which brought together leading IT services companies, technology firms, startups, SMEs, and Global Capability Centres (GCCs) to discuss the opportunities arising from India’s Free Trade Agreements for Indian services suppliers operating in areas of IT/ITeS and Business services. The Department of Commerce was represented by Shri. Darpan Jain, Additional Secretary.

In his media interactions on the achievements of the Department of Commerce over the course of the last 12 years, Additional Secretary emphasised India’s strong export trajectory, digital transformation, deepening trade relations, concerted action being taken to promote Brand India and efforts to enhance India’s export capabilities and competitiveness. The exponential growth that has been in several sectors over the course of the last 12 years was emphasised. Focus was placed on digital platforms that enable exporters to engage with the Department, such as Trade Connect, TIA portal, Trade facilitation mobile app, migration to eCoO 2.0, and mechanisms to enable ease of doing trade and reduce compliance burden. Additional Secretary also emphasised the evolution of India’s FTA landscape opening opportunities to enhance exports significantly and building trusted partnerships with countries with whom we share complementarities. While elaborating on the FTAs, special attention was also placed on the duty-free market access that we have been able to successfully negotiate with many of our partner countries over a range of sectors across manufacturing, agriculture, gems & jewellery, textiles & apparels, among others. Additional Secretary also shared insights on the design of India’s recently revamped Export Promotion Mission and the key instruments through which EPM aims at providing access to trade finance and expand holistic market access, especially for firms in the MSME sector.

In his interactions with the firms from IT/ ITeS sector and GCCs, Additional Secretary highlighted India’s strong growth in services exports over the last decade and emphasized the important role that a positive services trade balance has been playing. He also encouraged industry participants to explore the potential that India’s FTA partner countries offer in terms of market size, complementarity and network effects and elaborated on the key elements that FTAs entail in terms of market access, non-discrimination, disciplining domestic regulations, commitments on digital delivery of services, investments, mobility of Indian professionals and social security arrangements.

Industry participants welcomed the Department’s outreach, which provided a deeper understanding of what FTAs entailed and further strengthened their ability to expand their market access to new geographies and sectors by leveraging the commitments and obligations in FTAs. During the discussions, some of the issues that were delved into in detail centred around data adequacy issues, details on facilitative provisions around social security arrangements in various FTAs, challenges related to mobility of Indian professionals, taxation-related issues, how FTAs can support the expansion of high-value GCC operations across research and development, engineering, analytics, financial services, and emerging technology, among others.

Additional Secretary encouraged the industries to work to curate sector-specific, jurisdiction-specific proposals for enabling market intelligence, facilitating B2B matchmaking, mobility facilitation, reducing compliance burdens, etc so that they can be appropriately considered for support under the ambit of the Export Promotion Mission. He also reiterated the commitment of DoC to work closely with industry stakeholders to maximize the benefits of India’s trade agreements and support the country’s ambition of becoming a leading global hub for high-value services, innovation, and digital trade while addressing the challenges and availing opportunities presented by emerging innovative and deep technologies.

 

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