The Covid-19 impact has dipped down world trade. Let’s examine the silver lining in India’s Exports.
Why do we need to analyze it? Has India been affected by the pandemic?
This Covid-19 pandemic has brought havoc on World Trade. It has even inflicted great devastation on the Indian trade. India was greatly affected by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in various sectors. Intending to get hold of the situation, India announced its first nationwide lockdown in March,
which led to the economic slowdown.
The export to India has decreased and we are waiting for signs of recovery. The outgoing shipments have been reduced due to the effect of the decrease in demand and cancellation of orders. It created a great effect on the economy of India. India’s exports plunge to a record low of 60.28 percent in April to USD 10.36 billion, mainly on account of the coronavirus lockdown. Barring iron ore and pharmaceuticals, all the remaining key sectors registered negative growth in the month. In June 2020, India’s exports trailed their June 2019 numbers by 12%. In July 2020, the gap to July 2019 was 104%.
But with several nations continuing to order major quantities of drugs from India, exports rose 17.32 percent in May after a marginal 0.25-per cent rise in April. In April, only $10.36 billion worth of goods had been exported. The rate of fall in outbound trade as the manufacturing units remained closed on account of lockdown. In July, there’s positive growth in exports to north-east Asia (including China and South Korea) and Asian countries (including Malaysia, Singapore
and Vietnam).
“The latest merchandise exports show a recovery, with export decline reducing to (-)12.66% in August 2020. With the gradual opening up of the economy after the nationwide lockdown, industrial activity has started to normalize. A quick estimate of the Index of Industrial Production (IIP), released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation for the month of June 2020 stands at 107.8 as compared to 53.6 and 89.5 in April 2020 and May,
2020 respectively,” said an official release.
“Continuous fall in exports in August clearly shows the grave challenges of the global marketplace, which is bearing the huge impact of a never-seen-before health crisis (Covid-19), escalating trade war between the world’s two largest economies, and the rising geopolitical risks. Engineering exports, the largest contributor to the merchandise export basket, have seen a significant fall of 7.69 percent in August, making it imperative for the government to extend its helping hand,” said Mahesh Desai, Chairman, EEPC India.
Exuding confidence, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal pointed out that early data collected for September 2020 showed that in the second week of the month (September 8-14), exports increased by 10.73 percent to $6.88 billion from $6.21 billion in the comparable period last year. Exports earnings form a key high-frequency economic indicator. September 2020 was the first month of goods export rise after six months of the falling streak. Exports registered almost 6 percent year-on-year growth over September 2019 and hit the $27.58 billion mark.
As per the latest world economic outlook published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in mid-April, “Both China and India remain the only two large economies which won’t see a contraction due to the onset of a global recession by the COVID-19 pandemic. These two countries, along with their
peers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), will be the drivers of post-COVID-19 recovery in the coming decade.”
The matter remains that we as a nation are trying to muscle ourselves out of large importing markets, to increase our exports. As an initiative of this, On 15 Aug, standing on the Red Fort ramparts, Prime Minister Narendra Modi reiterated his government’s economic vision of self-sufficiency, adding that India would aim to become a supplier to the world. A day earlier, India had reported its latest trade numbers, and for the second successive month, India’s goods exports were within touching distance of their pre-covid levels. Indian exports are recovering. Business is returning back on track. The flexibility that we have is showing a sign of exports of India emerging. Our experts are going on a rising track.
India is a Developing Country, and we are ready to bring Our exports to a Higher level though in a pandemic condition like Covid.
