Export as Excuse

AS often as not, committees and study groups are appointed not so much to seriously examine specific problems and, on the basis of such effort, to come up with suggestions and recommendations, as to lend respectability to demands and proposals which are already in wide currency, having been mooted by various interest groups. The Committee on Export Strategy appointed by the Ministry of Commerce appears to be a case in point. The Committee was appointed in June 1979 and some ten months later, in this April, it came out with what it calls, for reasons not very clear, an interim report. Generally committees submit interim reports when, even as they have not been able to cover the whole of their terms of reference, they consider it necessary to come out with their findings and recommendations on some parts of them without waiting for their entire labours to be completed. In the present case, however, the Committee has, in its so-called interim report, already made an exhaustive set of recommendations covering all aspects of export policy and strategy. It is difficult to imagine what is left to be dealt with in the Committee's final report, if there is to be one. In the circumstances it would not perhaps be altogether uncharitable to suggest that the Committee has labelled its report as interim to protect itself against possible criticism that the recommendations it has made, many of them calling for basic changes in existing policies, do not appear to be based on any serious study and analysis of the subjects and issues referred to it.