The challenge to global trade due to the disruption in key shipping routes in the Red Sea region failed to dent the merchandise exports performance. Exports registered a 3.12% year-on-year growth in January, lifting hopes for the coming months.
Merchandise exports have grown for the fourth month in January in the first 10 months of FY24. Shipments in January stood at $36.92 billion while imports rose 3% on year to $54.41 billion. The trade deficit stood at $17.49 billion — the lowest since April last year.
The data confirms that while ships might be taking longer routes and charging more, there has been no impact on trade volumes.
Commerce secretary Sunil Barthwal said the government was very apprehensive about the Red Sea crisis but timely interventions have ensured that exports did not slump.
He said meetings were held with exporters, shipping companies, container companies and relevant ministries to navigate the Red Sea crisis. The direction to the banks to ensure maximum possible credit to exporters and to Export Credit Guarantee Corporation and EXIM Bank to increase their insurance premiums and receipts helped.
“I assure that we will be continuing these efforts by working with them (exporters) so that we are able to see positive growth in exports in the coming year too,” Barthwal said.
He said that long-term focussed initiatives like addressing non-tariff and technical barriers to trade with key markets is also helping. “We took up the issue of our exporters not being listed in some countries after they said that the list is big enough already. We have asked them to delist those who are not exporting and enlist those who have the capacity to export now. These efforts also helped us in pushing our exports.”
“We have also looked at what can be the new territories and new products where we can export. We are happy to say there are a huge number of products we have been able to push in our exports for the first time. We are trying to create a much larger basket,” Barthwal added.
Under merchandise exports, 18 of the 30 key sectors exhibited positive growth in January. Electronics exports grew 9.3% to $2.3 billion. Engineering products exports were up 4.2% to $8.7 billion. Petroleum product exports went up by 6.5% to $8.2 billion while drug and pharma exports were up 6.8% to $2.1 billion. Under imports, 17 out of 30 key sectors exhibited negative growth in January.
Services exports were up 17.1% on year at $32.8 billion. Services imports were up 8.2% at $16.5 billion. Overall exports were up 9.2% on year to $69.72 billion while imports were up 4.1% to $70.46 billion.
In April-January, merchandise exports were down 4.89% on year to $353.92 billion while imports declined 6.71% to $561.12 billion. Overall exports in the first ten months of FY24 were down 0.19% to $638.37 billion while imports fell 5.69% to $708.79 billion. Overall imports in April-January were down by $42.79 billion. Merchandise trade deficit has also fallen to $207.2 billion from $ 229.30 billion.