| Indian Institute of Foreign Trade | |
|---|---|
| Established | 1963 |
| Type | Education and Research Institution |
| Location | Delhi and Kolkata, India |
| Campus | Urban, 6 acres (24,000 m2) |
| Website | IIFT.edu |
The Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT) is an autonomous organization set up in 1963 by the government of India to help professionalize the country's foreign trade management and increase exports by developing human resources, generating, analyzing and disseminating data, and conducting research.
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IIFT is a deemed-university and it conducts an autonomous entrance examination across various centers in India. In 2011, an estimated whopping 90000 candidates took the entrance exam for Full Time MBA (IB) course with 220 seats, making it one of the toughest B-schools to get into in India. The institute is consistently ranked among the top 10 Business Schools in India, in various surveys conducted by independent agencies.
IIFT's portfolio of long-term programmes is as follows:
IIFT has, over the years, undertaken research studies with organizations like World Trade Organization, World Bank, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the Ministry of Commerce & Industry. IIFT has also trained more than 40,000 business professionals across 30 countries via its management development programs.
With the primary objective of actuality India’s potential in technology trade and addressing some of the institutional complexities, IIFT has set up the Centre for International Trade in Technology with financial and technical support from the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Government of India.
It is an institution in which roles of active players in international technology trade especially those of Ministry of Commerce & Industry and Ministry of Science and Technology are proposed to be synthesised.
The Centre for WTO Studies was established at IIFT in November 2002.
The major objective of the Centre has been to provide research and analytical support on a continuous basis to the Department of Commerce on identified issues pertaining to the World Trade Organization. In addition, it is also tasked to carry out research activities, bring out Publications on WTO related subjects, carry out Outreach & Capacity Building programmes by organizing seminars, workshops, subject specific meetings etc., and to be a repository of important WTO documents in its Trade Resource Centre.
The growing importance of Small and Medium Enterprises in the economy as a whole and External Trade in particular has prompted IIFT to establish a separate Center for SME studies which can act as a catalyst to the internationalsiation of SME activities. The center has become operational from May, 2005. The Centre for SME Studies at IIFT provides continuous support to the SME sector by carrying out activities which can be broadly classified into conducting Training Programmes, provision of Business Intelligence services through a Databank and acting as a catalyst for Interfacing with other concerned and associated institutions.
IIFT Delhi Centre is located in the Qutab Institutional Area in close vicinity of Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi, India and is spread over 6 acres (24,000 m2) of land.
The Kolkata Centre was setup in July 2006 when it was perceived that they needed a campus in a port city. The Union Commerce minister Kamal Nath inaugurated the campus in the presence of chief minister of West Bengal, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.[1] The campus is located in Sector V Salt Lake amidst the IT hub of Kolkata.
The facilities available on campus include lecture halls with audio-visual aids, conference halls for round-table conferences, an auditorium of 500 seating capacity, MDP Centre, three Computer Centres, indoor games, and residential facilities for students.
The IIFT library has 84,000 volumes and subscriptions to 800 journals with online cataloguing. The library has a collection of publications of FAO, IMF, OECD, UNCTAD, UNCTC, World Bank, and other international agencies.
The students also have access to database such as the NIC, CMIE, India Trades, World Bank Indicators and other audio-visual aids on management. IIFT has set up the WTO Resource Centre in the Library to focus exclusively on WTO issues.
The library in Delhi as well in Kolkata campus have online resources. The Institute subscribes EBSCO, Proquest, JSTOR, Emerald, Blackwell Synergy databases which mainly cover journal articles. For statistical data there are World Trade On-line, IMF databases, IndiaStat, ISI Emerging Markets, Woline, WITS, CMIE databases, World Trade Atlas, OECD online and many more to list.
Eleven servers (IBM, Compaq and HP), 300 Core 2 Duo/Pentium IV nodes with wired and wireless access to the network are available in the campus. The software applications include Solaris, Novell Netware, Windows 2000 Server, Windows XP, Lotus Domino, SPSS, Oracle, Developer 2000, and Java.
Other facilities include 24-hour Internet access, access to national and international databases, in-house publishing facilities, LCD / Plasma Screen Projection Systems, etc.
IIFT has Exchange Programmes with some international institutions. These collaborations are mainly for student and faculty exchanger programme, joint collaborations on research and various other capacity building exercise. As an outcome of the student faculty exchange programme both the partner intuitions gain outcome. Particularly, the student exchange programme has really picked up in the last five years. This is also because of the increase in the number of collaborations with premiere business schools like Bocconi University (Milano, Italy), International University in Geneva (Geneva, Switzerland), Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Blacksburg, Virginia, United States), Grenoble école de management (Grenoble, France), EDHEC Business School (Lille Cedex and Nice Cedex, France), Hanken School of Economics, Finland.
The institute has a student body called International Management Forum (IMF). IMF is the official representative student body at IIFT which acts as a coordinator for, and provides administrative support to, various student activities and events at IIFT besides taking policy decisions regarding student affairs in consultation with the Director/Chairperson/Program Director.
The institute has a Placement Committee[2] which is a ten member body of elected representatives. It consists of six people from Delhi campus and four from Kolkata campus. The purpose of Placement Committee is to ensure good final and summer placements for the students of the full time MBA (IB) programme. To this end, it makes representations to Human Resource departments of various organizations, and arranges placement week / interviews and selection procedures for IIFT students.
The institute has the following clubs on campus:
The institute has a Corporate Relations Committee(CRC).[3] The Corporate Relations Committee is an elected body of four members. The CRC is headed by a convener. The purpose of the CRC is to maintain constant interaction with corporate partners and associates of IIFT and to arrange interactions with corporates on a regular basis.
The students of MBA (IB) course also issue three monthly magazines:
The Institute also conducts Trade Winds the flagship event of IIFT for corporate interactions and the annual management festival Quo Vadis.
IIFT regularly publishes papers under two heads- Focus WTO and Foreign Trade Review[5].
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