The Hindu : Exports cross $51 b mark

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Apr 29, 2003

Business

Business

Exports cross $51 b mark

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI APRIL 28. Exports reached a milestone in 2002-03 by crossing the $50 billion mark with an 18 per cent growth rate, giving rise to expectations that India may attain its target of one per share of world trade sooner than expected. It has already reached 0.8 per cent share during 2002 though the aim is to achieve one per cent by 2007.

Releasing the data, the Union Commerce and Industry Minister, Arun Jaitley, said 18.05 per cent growth had been recorded in a year of global economic slump owing to the impact of 9/11 and later war clouds over Iraq. In addition, exporters had to deal with appreciation of the rupee that made exports less competitive. Even so, it had been possible to achieve exports of $51.7 billion while export growth is substantially higher than the 12 per cent annual growth target.

He told newspersons that it would not be able to assess the impact of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) on trade immediately barring the fact that some business might be diverted from the East Asian region to Inida. He noted that the significant growth in the last fiscal implied that India had been able to more than double its exports of merchandise goods in dollar terms in ten years. Quoting from a WTO report for the calendar year 2002, he said India had achieved 15 per cent growth, which is the second highest next only to China's 22 per cent growth among the 30 leading exporters in the world. With this, he said, India's share in world exports had risen from 0.7 per cent in 2001 to 0.8 per cent in 2002. "If the present trend is maintained we might even reach one per cent share in world exports before the target year of 2007'' he said.

As for next year's export target, he said a meeting would be held with the heads of export promotion councils and commodity boards on May 6 to chalk out the action plan for next year. Regarding the larger trade deficit, now estimated at $7.6 billion against $6.9 billion in the previous year, he said this reflected the high rise in international oil prices. The increase in oil imports was 26.7 per cent during the year as against only 13.3 per cent for non-oil imports. Mr. Jaitley also pointed to the 96 per cent rise in exports to China as evidence against the much touted "surge'' in imports of Chinese goods into this country. Besides, he said Indian exporters fared well when most others have not performed as well. Exports of U.S. dipped by 5 per cent and Canada by 3 per cent, while Indonesia recorded zero per cent, the U.K. showed one per cent growth while Singapore and Thailand recorded three and 5 per cent growth respectively.

The data for the last month of 2002-03, March, showed that exports rose by 15.28 per cent to reach $4.7 billion while imports were valued at $5.5 billion, recording 26.1 per cent growth.

Destination-wise, exports recorded the highest growth to China with 96 per cent rise followed by Singapore (59 per cent), UAE (33 per cent), the U.S. (29 per cent), Japan (24 per cent) and the European Union (15 per cent).

The data on a commodity wise basis for exports showed that iron ore registered the highest increase of 112.9 per cent, followed by rice (47.6 per cent), handicrafts (26 per cent), mica, coal and coke (24.9 per cent), man-made yarn and engineering products (24 per cent each), gems and jewellery (over 18 per cent each) and marine products (13.1 per cent).

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