Country’s exports contracted for the 13th month in a row, dipping about 15 per cent in December to $22.2 billion due to steep decline in engineering and petroleum shipments.
The total exports in 2015-16 will thus be lower than the previous fiscal’s figure of $310.5 billion.
“On the same trend, it will certainly be much lower than the last year (2014-15),” Commerce Secretary Rita Teaotia said.
There is a global slowdown and India is well integrated with the world economy and there would an impact of the slowdown on the exports, she told reporters here.
“There can be no effort to say that there has not been a decline in merchandise exports. This is the third year of consecutive slowdown,” she said.
Imports shrank too - down 3.88 per cent to $33.96 billion in December on yearly basis.
Gold imports shot up however pushing up the trade deficit to a 4-month high of $11.66 billion, as against $9.17 billion recorded in December 2014. The overall trade gap in August last year was $12.47 billion.
Gold imports rose to $3.80 billion last month, as against $1.36 billion in December 2014.
In December 2015, shipments of petroleum products shrank 47.69 per cent to $2.36 billion, year-on-year, while that of iron ore declined by 69.54 per cent to 21.24 million.
last month also witnessed a decline in exports of engineering products -- down 15.68 per cent at $5.82 billion. Gems and jewelery exports dipped by 7.75 per cent.
The cumulative exports during the April-December period declined by 18.06 per cent to $196.6 billion.
Imports too dipped by 15.87 per cent to $295.8 billion, leaving a trade deficit of $99.2 billion. The trade gap was $111.68 billion in April-December 2014-15.
The Commerce Secretary, however, expressed hope that the incentives announced by the ministry including the 3 per cent interest subsidy would help in supporting exporters.
Reacting on the data, exports body FIEO said significant decline in global commodities and crude oil prices are impacting the export figures.
“Global demand also does not seem to be picking up. With only countries like US showing little signs of improvement, this does not augur well for the country’s export sector in the long-run,” Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) President S C Ralhan said in a statement.
Ralhan said the Government needs to take steps for theremoval of inverted duty structure anomalies.
It also needs to exempt exports from service tax as well as create Export Development Fund with a corpus of 0.5 per cent to 1 per cent of total export value to contain dip in exports, he said.
The Commerce Ministry trade data further showed that oil imports during December 2015 dipped by 33.19 per cent, year-on-year, to $6.65 billion. However, non-oil imports grew by 7.63 per cent to $27.3 billion.
During April-December 2015-16, oil imports have declined 41.6 per cent to $68 billion and non-oil imports too dipped by 3.11 per cent to $227.7 billion.
Several sectors which recorded negative export growth in December include rice, cashew, oil meals, oil seeds, marine products, leather goods, and cotton yarn and fabrics.
The fall in exports, particularly in the engineering sector for several months in a row, is worrying, Engineering Export Promotion Council (EEPC) said in a statement.