India’s exports rose 4.32 per cent in January to $22.11 billion mainly due to increase in shipments of petroleum products, engineering goods and iron ore even as trade deficit widened to $9.84 billion. Gold imports slipped by 29.94 per cent to $2.04 billion in January from $2.91 billion in the same month last year as demand declined following cash crunch post demonetisation.
As per the data released by the Commerce Ministry, growth in exports last month was lower than 5.72 per cent recorded in December. Exports totalled $220.92 billion for the April-January period of the current fiscal, up about 1 per cent over the year-ago shipments. The data revealed that imports widened to $31.95 billion in January, up 10.7 per cent from the same month last fiscal. Higher imports took the trade deficit to $9.84 billion as against $7.66 billion in January 2016. The trade deficit or difference between imports and exports for April-January months is, however improved to $86.38 billion in comparison to $107.74 billion recorded in the similar period last fiscal.
The data revealed that iron ore exports jumped over 10 times to $184.43 million in January year-on-year. Export of petroleum products increased from $2.08 billion to $2.69 billion, a rise of 28.96 per cent. Shipments of engineering goods from India in January rose to $5.45 billion, up 11.89 per cent. Non-petroleum exports in January were valued at $19.42 billion against $19.11 billion year-on-year, an increase of 1.6 per cent. Non-oil imports during January were estimated at $23.81 billion.
The Ministry, quoting latest WTO statistics said the growth in exports is positive for USA (2.63 per cent), EU (5.47 per cent) and Japan (13.43 per cent) but China has exhibited negative growth of (-1.51 per cent) for November 2016. Meanwhile, services exports during December 2016 were valued at $13.8 billion registering a positive growth of 3.49 per cent as compared to growth of 1.72 per cent during November 2016.