The draft National Logistics Policy has been prepared in consultation with the Ministries of Railways, Road Transport and Highways, Shipping and Civil Aviation. Union Minister of Commerce and Industry & Railways, Piyush Goyal emphasised that all four Ministries must work in coordination with each other so that the 14% logistics cost of India’s GDP may be brought down to 9%.

The policy aims to address six broad areas of the e-commerce ecosystem viz. data, infrastructure development, e-commerce marketplaces, regulatory issues, stimulating domestic digital economy and export promotion through e-commerce. In response to the draft Policy, comments of various stakeholders including foreign governments have been received, including the US Government flagging issues of US businesses, which will be duly considered.

India has achieved a record high of USD 330. 07 billion of merchandise exports in the year 2018-19, registering a positive growth of 8.75% as compared to the previous year, owing to various steps taken by the Government including new Foreign Trade Policy (FTP), creation of new Logistics Division, introduction of Interest Equalization Scheme and launching of Trade Infrastructure for Export Scheme (TIES).

The State Reforms proposed by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) requires States and Union Territories to have a Single Window System across various Departments with features including online submission of application, Eliminating physical touch-point, tracking online status, etc. Under the assessment exercise of States/UTs for the year 2017-18, 21 States/UTs have designed and implemented online Single Window System.

DPIIT being the monitoring agency of Fund of Funds for Startups (FFS) (Corpus - ₹ 10,000 crore), recognised 19,351 Startups as on 24.06.2019. SIDBI, operating agency for FFS, has committed ₹ 3,123 crore to 49 SEBI registered Alternative Investment Funds (AIFs), which have raised a corpus fund of ₹ 27,478 crore. ₹ 483 crore have been drawn from Fund of Funds for Startups. Further, the AIFs have invested a total of ₹ 1,625 crore into 247 startups. A total of 26 states have notified and operational startup policies.

The Central Government has approved implementation of Central Sector Scheme Indian Footwear, Leather & Accessories Development Programme(IFLADP) with an approved expenditure of ₹ 2,600 crore over the three financial years from 2017-18 to 2019-20. Sub-schemes under IFLADP include HRD sub-scheme, Integrated Development of Leather Sector (IDLS) sub-scheme and Mega Leather, Footwear and Accessories Cluster (MLFAC) sub-scheme. Under HRD sub-scheme of the IFLADP, 1,84,136 persons were provided primary skill development training & 1,33,166 were placed during the last three years