Merchandise trade rises in April

Merchandise exports and imports in April grew year-on-year from the low base of the lockdown-hit month last year as well as from April 2019 levels. However, both exports and imports declined sequentially when compared to March 2021, indicating the impact of the spreading pandemic on trade.

Merchandise exports in April had the low-base advantage. In April, shipments stood at $30.21 billion-an increase of 197 per cent over $10.17 billion in April 2020, which was marked by the nationwide lock-down. There was also an increase of 16.03 per cent over the figure of $26.04 billion in April 2019. However, India broke the month-on-month recovery that was being accomplished since the lockdown of last year. Exports were down 12.3 per cent from $34.45 billion in March 2021.

Similarly, month-onmonth growth in imports was disrupted in April at

$45.45 billion, which was 6 per cent down from $48.38 billion in March 2021. However, when compared to April 2020, imports registered a growth of 166 per cent over $17.09 billion and 7.22 per cent over

$42.39 billion in April 2019. But, trade deficit widened on a month-onmonth basis. In April, the trade deficit stood at

$15.24 billion against $13.9 billion in March. It was

120 per cent higher than

$6.92 billion in April 2020 and lower by 6.81 per cent over $16.35 billion in April

2020.

While most of the commodity groups recorded growth over April 2020 due to the base effect, export of commodity groups like tea, leather and leather manufactures, tobacco, ready-made garments of all textiles, petroleum products, coffee, organic and inorganic chemicals, and meat, dairy and poultry products declined when compared to April 2019. Similarly, import of silver, newsprint, cotton raw & waste, pulses, project goods, leather & leather products, transport equipment and machine tools declined over April 2019.

Non-petroleum and nongems and jewellery exports in April stood at

$23.51 billion, against

$27.42 billion in March, a sequential drop of 14 per cent. While oil imports grew sequentially, non-oil and non-gems and jewellery imports declined sequentially. In April 2021, oil imports were $10.8 billion against $10.27billion in March. Non-oil import in April was estimated at

$34.65 billion against

$38.11 billion in March. Non-oil, non-gems and jewellery imports were

$26.05 billion in April 2021 against $29.62 billion in March.

"The recent surge in

Covid-19 cases has posed risks to the growth but we remain hopeful of continued recovery during the year. The WTO has also revised its projection upward and expects the global trade volume to increase by 8 per cent in

2021," said Mahesh Desai, chairman, Engineering Export Promotion Council.

Vodafone Group PLC and the cloud division of Alphabet Inc's Google are planning to jointly develop data services, the Financial Times reported on Sunday, citing interviews with representatives from both companies.

According to the FT, about 1,000 workers in the UK, Spain and the US will be asked to create "Nucleus," the new cloudbased storage and analytics portal, which will host Vodafone's data. Nucleus will be able to process around 50 terabytes of data a day within the cloud.

As part of the six-year agreement Vodafone will transfer data from its own servers to Google Cloud.

Vodafone and Google will also invent a system, called Dynamo, that will extract and transport data across different countries where the telecoms company operates.

The two companies will also in the future seek to sell consultancy services to other multinational businesses seeking to move huge amounts of data to the cloud.

Vodafone's chief technology officer, Johan Wibergh, told the FT that Nucleus will process 5,000 different data feeds.