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The Minister for Commerce and Industry, Mr Arun Jaitley, with the Minister of State, Mr. Vidhyasagar Rao, addressing a press conference in the Capital on Monday.

NEW DELHI, April 28

THE country's exports have crossed the crucial milestone of $50 billion during the fiscal 2002-03 touching $51.7 billion. This has injected optimism about hitting the target of one per cent share in world exports before the year 2007 if the extant trend is maintained and sustained.

Releasing the full-year trade figures at a news conference here, the Commerce and Industry Minister, Mr Arun Jaitley, said that India has achieved this at a time when the world economy was struggling to survive and war clouds in the latter part of the last fiscal with many of the developed countries finding it difficult to achieve growth in their exports.

The high growth in exports also attest to the fact that Indian manufacturer-exporters had become "competitive" and could sell goods such as drugs and formulations to industrial countries like the US where standards remain high.

With this achievement implying an export growth rate of 18.05 per cent in dollar terms and sizeably overshooting the target of 12 per cent fixed for 2002-03, the Minister said that the country has been able to more than double its exports of merchandise goods in a span of 10 years in dollar terms with exports having been trebled in rupee terms over the past one decade. Exports during April 2002 to March 2003 amounted to $51,702.22 million against $43,795.53 million in the previous fiscal, while imports amounted to $59,386.78 million against $50,745.81 million in 2001-02. Consequently, the trade deficit during 2002-03 amounted to $7,684.56 million, which is higher than the deficit of $6,950.28 million in 2001-02.

Exports in March 2003 were $4,773.63 million ($4,140.95 million in March 2002), while imports amounted to $5,548.26 million ($4,432.86 million).

Mr Jaitely said the 27 per cent increase in import of petroleum, oil and lubricants during 2002-03 was responsible for a high trade deficit partly. Oil imports last fiscal amounted to $17,768.77 million as compared to $1,40,116.37 million. However, non-oil imports too registered a robust growth of 13.31 per cent at $41,618.01 million against $36,729.44 million. Commenting on the performance, Mr Jaitley cited the latest WTO report that in the calendar 2002 India has compassed 15 per cent growth rate in its export of merchandise goods and this growth rate is the second largest next to China at 22 per cent. India's share in world exports in merchandise goods increasing from 0.4 per cent in 1992-93 to 0.7 per cent in 2001 to 0.8 per cent in 2002, the country would be ahead in obtaining an one per cent share in global trade before 2007.

Traditional items covering gems and jewellery, engineering goods, marine products, readymade garments, handicrafts, basic chemicals, iron ore, mica, coal and other ores, petroleum products and spices contributed to the high export performance.

Pointing out that exports to major destination includes US where the growth was 29 per cent, the EU at 15 per cent, the UAE at 33 per cent, Japan at 24 per cent, Exports to China's registered a growth of 96 per cent and to Singapore 59 per cent growth. The high export growth to China also belied all misplaced fears over Chinese goods inundating Indian market and pricing them out, he added.

Asked whether any specific export target for the next fiscal would be set, the Minister said that the Commerce Secretary, Mr Dipak Chatterjee, would be meeting the heads of export promotion councils and commodity boards on May 6 to assess their perceptions to chalk out an action plan for the next year.

On services exports, he said the move is still preliminary, as details need to be gleaned about their operations.

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