Districts of Odisha

The Districts as Export Hubs (DEH) initiative of the Directorate General of Foreign Trade, Department of Commerce came about with the aim of targeting export promotion, manufacturing and employment generation at the grassroots level. It builds on the policy impetus of the Atma Nirbhar Bharat Mission, vision of Make in India for the world and the clarion call of Vocal for Local given by the hon'ble Prime Minister by involving States and Districts as meaningful stakeholders and active participants in order to synergise export promotion efforts in India. He envisioned that each district in the country holds economic potential comparable to that of a small country. As a result, the DEH initiative was launched in August 2019 to foster balanced regional development across all districts of the country.

With the advent of Foreign Trade Policy (FTP) 2023, DGFT has legitimized this cause through the inclusion of ‘Districts As Export Hubs initiatives’ under the Chapter 3 of FTP 2023. It aims to channelize the potential and diverse identity of each District of the country to make them Export Hubs. Towards this goal, the products/services (including GI products, agricultural clusters and toy clusters) with export potential in all the districts of the country have been identified and institutional mechanism in the form of State Export Promotion Committees (SEPC) at State/UT level and District Export Promotion Committees (DEPCs) at the district level has been created in all districts of the country to provide support for export promotion and address the bottlenecks for export growth in the Districts. District Export Action Plans are being prepared for identified products and services, to benefit both producers and manufacturers- addressing challenges to export, identifying infrastructural bottlenecks, supply chain gaps, improving market accessibility and providing handholding for increasing exports.