The world is witnessing the carnage of the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. There has a been a significant loss of human lives & the global economy has also felt the impact severely. Global markets are in a free fall with supply-chain disruption & manufacturing falling to the lowest levels in decades. Reduced international trade, falling PMIs across the globe & deep cuts in GDP forecasts for the year indicate we have entered the aniticipated recessionary period. With indices fluctuating wildly and crude oil futures hitting negative prices on the dollar, this is uncharted territory for traders & policy makers.

A key thing to note is that exports have fallen across all of the commodity groups. As an immediate aftermath of the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic to multiple countries, global demand has fallen significantly and many orders have been cancelled. Further the disruption of supply chains due to the lockdown has aggravated the poor performance of Indian exports. It has been analysed that geographical concentration may pose a risk for Indian exporters in the current situation, given that exports recovery will largely be led by an increase in demand from these countries particularly. There might be a silver lining here as well with many of these countries now looking at reopening their economies, there could be a rise in demand in the coming weeks. Indian exporters should watch developments in these geographies closely and be prepared to capitalize on any opportunity that presents itself.

In this state of turmoil where India's International Trade looks forward to sector specific measures and expectations from the next FTP required to bring Indian exports back on track, the International Trade Committee of the Bengal Chamber under the leadership of the chairman Mr. Sourabha Dutta, Senior Vice President - Industrial Sales & Marketing of Exide Industries Ltd., organised an online workshop on "International Trade - Challenges and Opportunities - Post Covid-19", on Zoom on 10th July 2020 from 4pm - 6pm.

The agenda of the workshop was:
▪  Current situation of World Trade.
▪  India's footprint in world trade.
▪  Impact of COVID -19 on India's Trade.
▪  Facilitation measures issued by Government of India.
▪  Overall Impact OF COVID -19 on world economy.
▪  Challenges and opportunities POST COVID-19 in India.

The Faculty of the workshop was Mr. Sudhakar Kasture, Director of Helpline Impex Pvt. Ltd. and EXIM Institute (A Division of Helpline Impex Pvt. Ltd.), Mumbai & Partner of Generation Next Business Consulting. He is a renowned consultant and advisor to many National & Multinational Corporations, Commercial Banks etc

The workshop was well accepted by the participants and was attended by companies like ECGC, SAIL, EXIDE, TM International Logistics, PAR Enterprise, Essel Mining among others.