In 5 yrs, exports’ share to GDP down 4 % points

The share of exports to India’s economy came down from close to 15% in 2014-15, the year the Narendra Modi government took charge at the Centre, to 11% in 2018-19, when its term ends, a time series data showed, days after the Centre’s foreign trade numbers revealed overseas shipments had hit a record high in FY19.

The share of India’s merchandise exports to its gross domestic product in 2014-15 was 14.75%, given that the country’s foreign shipments hit $310.35 billion and the size of its economy was $2,103.588 billion.

Merchandise exports’ share to the GDP came down to 11.13% in 2018-19, the last year of Prime Minister Modi’s government at the Centre.
The data showed, barring 2018-19, India’s exports in the Modi regime could never touch the level of 2013-14 when they had logged $314.42 billion.

Only in 2018-19, overseas shipments touched an all-time high of $331 billion but in percentage terms, they contributed only 11.13% to the country’s GDP.

Immediately after demonetisation in 2016, exports logged $262.29 billion, their lowest in 15 years and their percentage share to the GDP dropped to 10.40%.

In the past five years, India’s exports to almost all its destinations including European Union, North America, Asean, China and East Asia came down heavily but shipments to Japan, African counties and Latin America went into negative territory.

The data showed, exports with China too dropped but imports increased over 11% cumulatively, making an insignificant difference in the trade deficit with the country, which still stands at a quarter of India’s total trade gap.

Despite an ambitious target, Modi’s flagship ‘Make in India’ could do little to India’s exports and analysts like Ruchir Sharma of Morgan Stanley have blamed it largely to demonetisation and GST moves.

India’s former chief statistician Pronab Sen too told DH that demonetisation hit producers in India and led to large scale imports, while GST hit exporters as it involved refund issues.