Showcasing India’s growth with data

India is among the fastest growing countries in the world. India’s exports of goods and services reached $766 billion in 2022. Merchandise exports were $453 billion, while services exports saw a 30% jump over 2021 to reach $313 billion in 2022. India is among the top investment destinations in Asia. In 2021, India was the seventh largest FDI recipient, with $45 billion in inflows (UNCTAD). In the same year, India captured almost 50% of the total R&D investment in developing Asia.

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India’s continued high growth and exports is driven by several pathbreaking reforms, starting with GST and PLIs, and measures to reduce logistics costs, such as the PM Gati-Shakti National Master Plan (PMGS-NMP) and the National Logistics Policy (NLP). The focus on the logistics sector has helped India to improve its ranking from 44 in 2018 to 38 (out of 139 countries) in 2023 in the World Bank’s Logistics Performance Index 2023.

To meet the exports target of $2 trillion by 2030, India has fast-tracked the FTA negotiations with like-minded and key export markets. It signed the comprehensive agreements with Mauritius and the UAE and the Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement (ECTA) with Australia. It is negotiating comprehensive agreements with the UK, Australia, Canada, and the European Union. These agreements focus on diversifying the goods and services export baskets, attracting investments, and building resilient supply chains. India’s recent Foreign Trade Policy (FTP 2023), with a focus on trade facilitation, is in the right direction to support export growth.

While India seems to be doing fairly well, yet many in India and abroad are apprehensive of the growth, worried about employment and job losses and concerned about opening up sectors under trade agreements. The fears have compounded due to global slowdown and its impact on some of our exports, including technology services. Such fear arises primarily because of the lack of data and evidence. Major services exporting countries, unlike India, are now publishing their bilateral services trade data. Aside from developed countries like Australia, the US, and the UK, developing nations like Malaysia also report their data on bilateral trade in services to international organisations like the WTO. While countries like the US report data for around 71 countries, Malaysia is reporting for around 22 partner countries, including India. While India is one of the most attractive investment destinations, there is no data on sector-wise and country-wise FDI inflows. This makes it difficult to understand which types of firms from which countries are investing in what type of sectors. Many countries like Australia publish data on the FTA utilisation to help analyse the impact of the FTA. Using such data, scholars in these countries can do robust data modelling to understand the pre and post impact of the trade agreement. Availability of robust data will help in better data analysis for trade negotiations. For example, scenario analysis can be done to showcase the impacts of liberalisation on GDP, employment, and investment, which will, in turn, help to show evidence-based outcomes of the benefits of the FTA and liberalisation with key export markets. A report by one of the authors, titled Express Delivery Services: Supporting the Journey towards India@2047, found that export data through express or e-commerce is not captured in India’s total trade data—our trade and exports may be under-reported.

While the FTP (2023) has identified four new towns of economic excellence in addition to the already existing 39 towns and focuses on making districts the export hubs, it is also important to know how MSMEs in these town and across districts and production centres can be linked to the global value chain and what kind of capacity building programmes and training do they need. Such information can help in targeted policy designs.

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All stakeholders—government, academicians, and the private sector—can collaborate for better data gathering, collation, and analysis. India needs a state-of-the-art trade data centre, and this can be designed after looking at global best practices in data collection, identifying data gaps, and by using surveys and other tools. This will also help to diversify our production and export baskets, with a focus on inclusive growth, attracting investment and generating employment.

There is no doubt that India is doing well in a difficult global scenario. However, unlike many countries, India is yet to showcase its success stories through data. Robust trade and investment data will further confirm India’s high growth performance, build business confidence, and help in policy design.

The writer is professor, ICRIER

Coauthored by Eshana Mukherjee, research associate, ICRIER