The exports of the country have grown by 9 percent to $24 billion in January with the help of a growth in chemical shipments, petroleum products, and engineering goods as the trade deficit increased to a three-year high. According to the data given by the commerce ministry, there was a trade gap from $16 billion in January to $41 billion because there was an increase in imports by 26 percent due to inbound shipments of crude oil.
The trade deficit of the country which is the difference between the imports and exports went to $17 billion in November 2014. In January last year, the trade deficit was $10 billion. Since August 2016 to January 2018, the exports have been following a positive trajectory with a slight dip of 1 percent in October 2017 according to the Ministry. The total value of exports increased by 12 percent from $222 billion to $248 billion for the period of April to January 2017-2018. Over this period of ten-month, the imports of the current fiscal year went to $379 billion from $310 billion experiencing a growth of 22 percent. During this period, the trade deficit also widened to $131 billion. The exports of chemicals went up by 33 percent, engineering goods by 16 percent and petroleum products by 40 percent in January.
But, the shipments of the ready-made garments went down by 9 percent to $1.4 billion last month. Gold imports too dropped down to $1.6 billion by 22 percent last month from $2 billion in January 2017. Mr. Suresh Prabhu, the commerce minister, mentioned that all the export-focused initiatives will continue to bear fruits. The Federation of Indian Export Organizations stated that even though the shipments are going through a positive growth for the third time consecutively, the growth rate is going down on monthly basis.