Exports momentum may sustain in New Year too

After staging a strong recovery from COVID-induced slowdown in 2021, India’s exports are likely to extend the growth story to the New Year also on increased demand in the global markets, boost in domestic manufacturing due to production-linked incentive schemes and implementation of some interim trade pacts.

Expectations of positive growth in the country’s exports are also backed up by the outlook of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) which predicts a 4.7 per cent expansion in the global merchandise trade volume in 2022. Exporters believe that the outbound shipments would cross $400 billion mark in this fiscal going by the current momentum and may reach $475 billion in 2022-23. But, the growth and global demand will also depend on whether the countries would be able to contain COVID-19 and the new variant Omicron through massive vaccination worldwide, they suggest.

As per a Reserve Bank of India survey, released in September, exports of software services, including services delivered by foreign affiliates of Indian companies, stood at $148.3 billion in the fiscal year to March 31, 2021. This is more than $145.3 billion the world’s top oil exporter, Saudi Arabia expects from oil sales in 2021. With the largest engineering population in the world, the software export story was seeded about four decades ago and has huge potential to go up further. But software exports are just a part of India’s export-led growth story which is gaining momentum.

Commerce Secretary BVR Subrahmanyam said the world respects India as a trusted global business partner now and the country’s exports are growing in regions like the Middle East besides India’s traditional destinations.