New Delhi, Jan 30 (IANS) India is unlikely to meet the $300 billion export target set for the current financial year due to a slowdown of demand in the US and European markets, the Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) said Monday.

Talking to mediapersons, newly-elected FIEO president M. Rafeeque Ahmed said the continued uncertainty in the global economy would also make it difficult to achieve the $500 billion export target by 2013-14.

“We are likely to miss the export target of $300 billion set for the current fiscal and achieving $500 billion exports by 2013-14 seems to be difficult,” Ahmed said at his first press conference after taking charge of the country’s apex export body.

“Reaching $500 billion in the next two years would require a compound annual growth rate of over 29 percent, which is a tall order,” he said.

India’s exports grew by 25.8 percent to $217.6 billion in the first three quarters of 2011-12.

The average growth in the first three quarters is healthy, mainly because of a high export growth registered during the first six months of the fiscal.

In fact, export growth had dropped to 3.87 percent in November and 6.7 percent in December. This has raised concern over the growth in the remaining period of the year.

Ahmed said exports had registered healthy growth in the past couple of years partly because of high commodity prices.

“In 2010, the commodity prices went up by 26 percent, which also helped our exports figure. Commodity prices, particularly of metals, are softening, which will reduce the export value of the end products as well,” he said.