As Suresh Prabhu takes over, here's all you need to know about the Commerce Ministry

After Sunday's Cabinet reshuffle, Nirmala Sitharaman has passed on the baton of the Commerce Ministry to former Railways Minister Suresh Prabhu.

Also read: Nirmala Sitharaman: From commerce to defence in four years

After three years of managing one of the world's largest rail networks, Prabhu now has his task cut out in his new role. Here's a glimpse of what India's Commerce Ministry entails:

The Commerce and Industry Ministry is in charge of India's major development component - trade and domestic manufacturing with the scope of improving India's employment numbers.

The Commerce Ministry looks into the status of every commodity and sector ranging from agriculture to footwear.

Trade is the most basic element the ministry is responsible for, with its scope further divided into these sub-categories - foreign trade policies, trade agreements, interstate trading, boosting exports and in turn, increasing employment opportunities.

Broadly speaking, there are two categories of trade - merchandise and services. Merchandise trade includes goods and services trade involving the value of services exchanged between residents and non-residents and services provided through foreign affiliates established abroad.

With trade being the major component of India's GDP, the Commerce Ministry oversees how much needs to be imported and encourage domestic manufacturers to engage.

The Ministry formulates and constantly reworks India's foreign trade policy. Observing the performance of the goods and services, decisions will be made accordingly to accelerate India's growth. This is one of the important ways for the country to be on par with the world economy.

By setting the backdrop for boosting growth, the Ministry is set to promote more exports rather than the country depending on imports.

One out of the three schemes to promote manufacturers is the five-year Interest Equalisation Scheme (IES). Launched in 2015, the scheme aims to give exporters an interest equalisation of 3 percent per annum. This means that the domestic manufacturers, mostly the ones involved in labour-intensive and MSME sector, would benefit by availing bank loans at 3 percent.

With Suresh Prabhu taking over, it will be interesting to see if he continues his social media savvy ways in his new role.