Shifting sands – on external trade

Source- The post is based on the article “Shifting sands” published in “The Hindu” on 17th June 2023.

Syllabus: GS3- Indian economy

News- The article explains the scenario of trade in recent times.

What are statistics related to India’s external trade in recent times?

There was a 10.3% decline in goods exports in May. It marks the fourth successive month of contraction in good exports.

Except for electronics exports, other categories of exported goods did not show good performance.

Engineering goods contracted for the 11th month in a row. The textiles sector shrank for the seventh straight month.

There was a 30% decline in petroleum exports. It may largely be due to cooling global prices that are also affecting other commodities’ export values.

After a 6.7% rise in 2022-23, goods exports are now down 11.4% over the first two months of this year.

The current estimate of $25.3 billion for May’s services exports is quite sobering.

Global service exports increased by a mere 0.7% in May. There was a 26.7% boom in services exports last year. The global slowdown now appears to be impacting the services too.

Core imports excluding oil and gems and jewellery have contracted 5.5%  in 2023-24.

May import bill was just 6.6% below 2022 levels and almost 14% over April’s figure which had been the lowest in 15 months. This has lifted the merchandise trade deficit to a five-month high of $22.1 billion.

It is believed the trend may improve from July or August. The World Trade Organization has upgraded the global trade growth from 1% to 1.7% for 2023.