Gujarat’s exporters will get a state agency of their own. A government resolution dated November 3 creates the Gujarat Export Promotion Council (GEPC) as a non-profit company under Section 8 of the Companies Act, owned entirely by the state and parked under the Industries and Mines Department in Gandhinagar, Gujarat Samachar reported. The Chief Secretary chairs its board and the Industries Commissioner is its managing director. The company begins life with authorised and paid-up capital of Rs 1 lakh, held in the Governor’s name through state nominees, according to DeshGujarat.
The Rs 1 lakh figure is a registration formality, not a budget. The resolution allows the council to raise its own funds and borrow from banks, and any real operating money will have to come through the state budget or departmental grants later. Nothing announced so far says how many people it will employ or when an exporter can walk in and ask for help.
Where the idea came from
The council traces back to a state task force on manufacturing competitiveness, which named export development as one of three pillars for industrial growth. The Gujarat State Institution for Transformation, the state’s planning think tank, followed up with a report in May 2025 recommending a dedicated export body, and the Industries Commissionerate turned that into the blueprint the cabinet has now cleared, IANS reported via SocialNews. The board can have between 3 and 15 directors, drawn from Finance, the MSME Commissionerate, GIDC, iNDEXTb, the Gujarat Infrastructure Development Board, and the ports, cottage industries and agriculture departments. Every seat named so far is an official’s; the resolution does not reserve any for exporters or trade chambers.
The timing fits a pattern. The state has spent 2026 building the pitch for Vibrant Gujarat 2027, on top of the industrial policy we reported on earlier. A council gives the export part of that pitch an institutional address.
What a small Surat or Rajkot exporter would actually get
The functions list is long. Market intelligence and entry strategies for overseas markets; help with foreign trade rules and certification; trade fair participation; an exporter portal and digital trade platform; common facility and testing centres; advice on trade finance, insurance and pre- and post-shipment credit; and support on patents and trademarks abroad and on non-tariff barriers and trade disputes. Two items stand out as new for Gujarat. The council must write a District Export Promotion Plan for every district, refreshed as local production and demand change, and coordinate the District Export Promotion Councils that already exist on paper under the Centre’s districts-as-export-hubs scheme. It is also tasked with import substitution: identifying sectors that depend on imports and backing local manufacturers who can replace them.
For a textile unit in Surat or an engineering workshop in Rajkot, the practical change is a single state office to approach instead of a sector-specific national export promotion council in Delhi or Mumbai. Whether that office answers the phone depends on staffing the resolution does not yet provide for.
The numbers the council inherits
Gujarat remained India’s largest exporting state in 2025-26, shipping goods worth USD 110.63 billion, or 25.6 percent of the national total, on Directorate General of Foreign Trade data cited by India Shipping News. Maharashtra, in second place, shipped about USD 70 billion. The headline hides a dip: the same report puts Gujarat’s exports 4.9 percent below the previous year, with tariffs and softer commodity prices blamed, in a year when India’s overall exports reached a record USD 863 billion, IANS reported in July. Petroleum products, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, engineering goods, gems and jewellery and electronics carry most of that total, and the largest of them come from a handful of big firms that need no state hand-holding. Surat’s diamond trade, which we covered when US tariffs hit it, is the kind of mid-sized, MSME-heavy sector the council is meant to serve.
The first visible test will be the council’s first budget line and the appointment of its managing director’s team. Until then, exporters have a new name on a door in Gandhinagar and the same offices to call as before.
Sources: Gujarat Samachar, DeshGujarat, IANS via SocialNews, India Shipping News, IANS Live
This report was written with AI assistance from the publicly reported sources linked here; each fact was cross-checked against at least two of them.