CAPEXIL organises seminar

A horde of entrepreneurs engaging in exports business of books, packaging materials, and others thronged the seminar titled ‘Import-Export Financing’ organised by HSBC in association with CAPEXIL. 

Unfolding of the event held on June 24, 2011 in New Delhi was marked by a welcome address by Sukumar Das, chairman, Northern Region, CAPEXIL followed by subsequent presentations by a panel of experts comprising Niraj Gupta, branch manager, ECGC; Akshat `Sharma, manager–trade & supply chain sales North India, HSBC; and Varsha Verma, associate editor, S-Media Group. Talks on business developments at the ‘Import-Export Financing’ reinforced a relevance of India’s growing economy and exhorted everyone attending the seminar to make a transition in their business to a new route of volume and profit. Credit risks insurance covers, import-export financing and effective utilisation of print documents and internet were the focuses extensively articulated.

Getting rid of risks

(L-R) Varsha Verma, Niraj Gupta, Sukumar Das and Akshat Sharma

ECGC’s presentation on Export Credit Guarantee Schemes underlined guaranteed offerings to banks and financial institutes to help exporters obtain better facilities. Referring a string of risk covers offerings like Banking Credit Advances for Exports, Post-Shipment Advances for Purchase/Discounting/Negotiation of Export Bills, Shipment Comprehension Risk Policy and others, Niraj explained ECGC’s diverse credit risk insurance covers against loss in exports of goods and services. “We don’t directly cover the risks of the exporters but provide covers to the financing banks in the pre-shipment,” he mentioned.

Citing data of global business failure reports by June 2011, Niraj stated that payments for exports are open to risks even at the best of times. “The risks have assumed large proportions today due to economic and political crises, wars and other social factors sweeping across the world,” he said adding exporters may face commercial risks of insolvency or protracted default of buyers. ECGC’s export credit insurance is designed to protect exporters from the consequences of the payment risks, both political and commercial. “It is quite challenging to offer our risk covers schemes, which have limited scopes but vastly useful,” proclaimed Niraj.

Export bill discounting

Bumping up the business of exporters, HSBC offers DC discounting, in which they buy the bill of exchange or promissory note before it is due and credits the value after a discount charge to the exporter’s account. This was the main theme being spotlighted at HSBC’s presentation during the seminar. “We offer discounting of both domestic as well as foreign LCs, presentable to the nominated banks in ‘with’ and ‘without’ recourses,” explained Akshat.

Roles of print and internet

After the inspiring sessions on credit schemes and finance policies, closure of the seminar got into an exclusive presentation of how ‘print and internet’ can boost business potential of the export companies. “Brochures, business cards, newsletters and other business-related documents are not merely papers for communication but helps companies significantly impress their clients and represent overall demeanour of the establishment,” explicated Varsha. She also mentioned the significance of content, design and using of best quality papers, advanced printing technology to produce the documents to cast an impressive spell on customers.

In addition to all good deeds of printing advances, Varsha also specified the role of internet in business promotion. She explained the way an export firm can develop their official website, blog, interaction forum, social network media, etc to pull attentions of browsers/customers. In her explanation to an attendee’s question on ‘search engine optimisation’ tool in online advertising, she pointed out how the technology helps website receive optimum hits. End of the seminar was not the end in the real sense as attendees expressed their keenness to correspond with the speakers via mails to put up further queries on the topics they discussed.