With global economy in turmoil, India’s exports fell for the 13th month in a row by 14.75 per cent to $22.3 billion in December as global slowdown and a relatively firm rupee lowered overseas orders. This is the thirteenth month of contraction.
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Last month also witnessed a decline in exports of engineering products – down 15.68 percent at Dollars 5.82 billion. Forming the third highest constituent of India’s import basket after crude and electronic goods, gold imports more than doubled, rising by a whopping 179 per cent to $3.80 billion in December from $1.36 billion in the same period a year ago. Non-petroleum exports during April-December 2015 were valued at $ 173.291 billion as compared to $ 191.359 billion for the corresponding period in 2014, a reduction of 9.4%.
Non-oil, non-gold imports declined 8.5 per cent in October.
Looking at the cumulative figures, exports during the first three quarters of the current fiscal were valued at $196.60 billion down 18.06 percent over previous year’s $23.99 billion and import fell 15.87 percent to $29.58 billion from $35.16 billion. Gems and jewelery exports dipped by 7.75 per cent.
Government data shows imports fell for 13 months by 3.9 per cent to $33.96 billion in December as global oil prices fell to 11-year low and lowered the import bill. Although oil was the biggest contributor to the fall, Teaotia blamed the global slowdown for fall in exports. The surplus stemmed from United States dollars 3.145 billion in exports and USD 2.524 billion in imports, the Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade reported this Monday (18). In 2014-15, India’s exports had stood at $310.34 billion, while imports were $448.03 billion.
During April-December this fiscal, the imports increased to $26.45 billion as against $25.85 billion in the same period past year.
“This means that there is a higher domestic consumption going on and the weightage of petroleum products in the overall exports that used to be as high as about 28 percent, is now coming down to 11-12 percent because of the both value and volume factors”, he said.
A trade deficit is an economic condition where a country imports more goods than it exports, with deficit equal to the difference between the net worth of imports and exports.
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“We have done unusually well on the services side”, she said.
