Post-crisis India’s Merchandise Export Growth: What Has Changed?

Abstract

This article comprehensively examines the growth and pattern of India’s merchandise exports during and following the financial crisis period (2007–08 to 2016–17) using Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics and United Nations Commodity Trade/World Integrated Trade Solution trade data. The entire analysis is based on leading trade indices and indicators and the results confirm that significant change in India’s trading structure is associated with the fast growth of foreign trade. The composition of exports has undergone changes overtime, bearing a strong influence of factor endowments and technology in favour of both human capital intensive and technology intensive sectors. The magnitude of product diversification shows that India’s export basket is poorly diversified but more diversified than BRICS countries except China. India’s export destinations showed a major shift from the developed countries market to the emerging markets in Asia and Africa. However, India holds more increased trade intensity with USA and Hong Kong. Dynamism in labour-intensive manufacturing sector is vital to promote India’s exports of agricultural value-added products and enable more competitive at the world. Also, the development of new markets should be viewed as part of a wider effort to enlarge the India’s foreign trade. JEL Code: F10, F14, F19