The country’s goods trade deficit widened to $16.30 billion in January 2018 from $9.9 billion in the same month a year ago and $14.88 billion in the previous month owing to imports outpacing exports, data released by the commerce ministry on Thursday showed.
The January trade deficit is a more than three-year high. It was $16.86 billion in November 2014.
Exports for January went up by 9.07% year-on-year to $24.38 billion. However, goods imports rose 26.1% to $40.68 billion.
‘Positive trajectory’
“Exports have been on a positive trajectory since August 2016 to January 2018 with a dip of 1.1% in the month of October 2017,” the ministry said in a statement.
Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu tweeted that “export focused initiatives continue to bear fruit.”
According to G.K. Gupta, president, Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO), though exports in January 2018 witnessed positive growth for third time in a row, the rate of growth is declining on a month-on-month basis. Besides, export growth of about 9%, more than 6% has been contributed by petroleum products alone.
Labour-intensive sectors like garments, carpets, handicrafts, man-made textiles are exhibiting negative growth primarily due to liquidity crunch emanating from blocking of funds in GST, Mr. Gupta said in a statement.
FIEO estimates that the trade deficit in this fiscal will touch about $150 billion.
During the April-January 2017-18 period, trade deficit was $131.15 billion. Exports during April-January 2017-18 increased by 11.75% to $247.89 billion, while imports during the 10-month period of the current fiscal registered a 22.21% growth to $379.05 billion.
FIEO wants the government to look into the refund issues by undertaking a clearance drive so as to clear all cases by March 31, 2018.
Alternatively, banks may be asked to finance exporters against the pending GST refund claims with interest to be borne by the government, it said.
Shipments of chemicals, engineering goods and petroleum products grew by 33%, 15.77% and 39.5% in January, while gold imports shrunk 22% to $1.59 billion. Shipments of ready-made garments declined by 8.38% to $1.39 billion last month.
Oil and non-oil imports during January jumped by 42.64% and 20.49% to $11.65 billion and $29 billion, respectively. During April-January 2017-18, oil imports increased by 26.35% to $87.80.billion. Meanwhile, data put out by the Reserve Bank showed that the exports in services in December 2017 were valued at $16 billion. The imports stood at $9.85 billion.
