India's exports rise marginally by 1.62% to $33.92 bn in August

New Delhi: India's exports rose marginally by 1.62 per cent to $33.92 billion, while trade deficit more than doubled to $27.98 billion in August due to increased crude oil imports, Commerce Ministry data showed on Wednesday.

The revised data showed that imports rose by 37.28 per cent to $61.9 billion in August this year.

The preliminary data released by the ministry on September 3 had shown a 1.15 per cent decline in exports to $33 billion in August.

During April-August 2022-23, exports registered a growth of 17.68 per cent to $193.51 billion. Imports during the five-month period of this fiscal grew by 45.74 per cent to $318 billion.

Trade deficit widened to $124.52 billion in April-August this fiscal as against $53.78 billion in the same period last year.

The deficit in August last year was $11.71 billion.

Crude oil imports in August this year increased by 87.44 per cent to $17.7 billion. However, gold imports dipped by about 47 per cent to $3.57 billion, the data showed.

On the other hand, silver imports jumped to $684.34 million during the month under review from $15.49 million in the same month last year.

Rise in import values in August has been witnessed in major commodity groups such as coal, coke & briquettes (133.64 per cent to $4.5 billion), chemicals (43 per cent to about $3 billion), and vegetable oil (41.55 per cent to about $2 billion).

Further, export products that recorded positive growth in August included electronic goods, rice, oil meals, tea, coffee and chemicals.

Export of petroleum products rose by 22.76 per cent to $5.71 billion. Similarly, chemicals and pharma shipments increased by 13.47 per cent and 6.76 per cent to $2.53 billion and $2.14 billion respectively.

Sectors which recorded negative growth in August included engineering (14.19 per cent to $8.3 billion), gems and jewellery (about 3 per cent to $3.33 billion), ready-made garments of all textiles (0.34 per cent to $1.23 billion), and plastic (1.10 per cent to $747.21 million).

Meanwhile briefing media here, Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) said they expect that exports would start picking up from October onwards.

Reasons like rupee depreciation and moving away of buyers from China as manufacturing cost is going up in Beijing will help India's exports in the coming months, FIEO president A Sakthivel said.

It expects the country to clock $470 billion in goods exports this fiscal.

FIEO director general Ajay Sahai said that demand for low-value goods is increasing but volumes seem to remain intact.

The WTO has already revised its forecast for the global trade growth to 3 per cent from 4.7 per cent in April and FIEO expects a further downward revision in October.

"China is becoming costlier and less reliable with a zero Covid tolerance policy and anti-China sentiments are gaining ground day by day. A lot of orders for low-value products, which were a virtual monopoly of China, are now coming to India," the organisation said.

On the production linked incentive scheme for the textile sector, Sakthivel said that after technical textiles and manmade fibre, the government is looking at incentives for more sub-sectors with relaxed investment and turnover criteria of Rs 25 crore and Rs 50 crore, respectively.

"Uniqlo is in talks with the textiles ministry to have one complete PM Mitra park (for its operations)," Sakthivel told reporters.

FIEO said that the demand for liquidity has gone up as buyers are delaying the payments and asking exporters to withhold further shipments or release small quantities of such shipments.