Exports in January provisionally rose an annual 32.5% to $20.6 billion, the Union trade secretary said on Saturday, adding he saw exports for the year to March at more than $220 billion, slightly higher than the government?s $200-billion target.
But the trade deficit in January widened to $8 billion, after hitting a three-year low of $2.6 billion in December, and has reached $89 billion for the April-January period.
On the whole, the export performance is pretty good and it is expected to cross $200 billion in February 2011 and it will cross $220 billion during this fiscal, commerce secretary Rahul Khullar said here on Saturday.
?It is a huge jump. Export performance is pretty damn good. My guess is that by next month, we will cross $200 billion and we should end up at $220-225 billion,? Khullar added.
Exporters? body Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) said the country?s exports are increasing in new markets of Latin America and Africa along with the US and specially within Asia.
The April-January exports rose an annual 29.4% to $184.6 billion, while imports for the period provisionally grew 17.6% to $273.6 billion. Imports in January were at $28.6 billion.
The sectors that performed well were gems and jewellery (9.3%), engineering (70%) and petroleum and oil lubricants (36%), Khullar said.
Exporters are getting huge demands for engineering products from Latin American countries such as Columbia.