It is quite unacceptable. Exports fell 21 percent to $21 billion in August. It is the ninth straight month of decline and yet the government has failed to come up with a plan to prevent this freefall. There is a lot of talk, but little action. Recently, the commerce minister said that the Centre would soon come out with sops for the sector. This is a welcome decision, but I wonder what made our policymakers to wait for so long. Time and again, different sections of the industry have tried to awaken them from deep inaction, but succeeded little, and the situation continued to deteriorate with every passing month.

Over the recent months, slow global demand and low oil prices have been cited as major reasons behind the export collapse. There is no doubt that these factors played a negative role, but the government should have taken them as a challenge rather than an excuse. If proper measures were taken at right time to cushion the negative impacts, the situation we are facing today could be prevented to a great extent. As a result of inaction, our non-oil exports, which fell to $96.9 billion from $105.1 billion during the April-August period, also suffered. Now, even our traditional sectors such as engineering and garments are getting impacted.

And do we have a long-term strategy for the sector's future? Since the new government has come to power, there has been a lot of talk on manufacturing, which is a must for the country to realize its overall growth, employment and poverty alleviation goals, but I don't think double-digit manufacturing growth will be possible without recording double-digit expansion in exports, and therefore there is an urgent need to integrate all our manufacturing and reform initiatives with a concerted effort to achieve foreign trade expansion.

Finance minister Jaitley recently said that our GDP growth could outperform last year's 7.3 percent rate, but I think we have a lot to do to achieve that. Things aren't going well with many a sector, including infrastructure, real estate, mining, automotive, etc. Issues such as GST, land acquisition, bank NPAs, financial health of power companies, etc. are yet to be resolved. Path breaking reforms are still in the waiting. And finally, I want to reiterate that our export sector is badly in need of support. A 'wait and do nothing' approach will not just fasten exports downfall but eventually shatter the growth dream as well.

I invite your opinions.