By Venkatesh Raghavan
Mumbai: The statistic for the period from April to December 2020 indicated a negative growth that stood at minus 12.5% over the same period in the previous year when it came to India’s overall exports. The estimated figure stands at USD 348.49 billion. The figure is given as estimated as the RBI has so far released figures only till November 2020 and the figures till December stand estimated and are subject to revision once the RBI releases the same. The overall imports for the same period (estimated for the same reasons) stood at USD 343.27 billion, that is indicative of a negative growth rate of minus 25.86%.
Breaking it up into components, the exports for the merchandise category stood at USD 200.80 billion, a growth rate of -15.73%. The exports for the services sector stood at USD 147.69 billion, a growth rate of -8.08%. A similar breakup in the import sector indicates that the import of merchandise category goods stood at USD 258.27 billion, a growth rate of -28.08%. Imports in the services sector stands at USD 85.00 billion, a growth rate of -14.01%.
Citing the export figures of December 2020 as standalone, there is a marginal positive growth of 0.14%. The figures for overall exports in December 2020 alone stand at USD 27.15 billion as compared to the previous year’s USD 27.11 billion. The overall trade figures however, owing mainly to a sharp fall in imports reported a trade surplus of USD 5.22 billion. The main contributors to the marginal positive growth in export figures of December 2020 as compared to 2019 are from the commodities section, that include categories like other cereals, oil meals, iron ore, cereal preparations and miscellaneous processed items.
In addition, non-petroleum and non-gems and jewellery exports for the month of December 2020 stood at USD 22.22 billion as compared to USD 21.06 billion for the same period in the previous year. On the imports front, a negative growth rate was registered mainly for transport equipment (minus 32.05%), metalliferous ores and other minerals (-24.42%), petroleum crude and by products (-10.61%), coal, coke and briquettes (-7.27%) besides professional instruments that include optical goods (-1.54%).
Taking into account the merchandise and services, the overall trade surplus as earlier mentioned, stood at USD 5.22 billion in sharp contrast to the previous year’s deficit figures of USD 64.09 billion for the period April to December.
