Exports of goods from the country grew for the eleventh continuous month in July 2017 to $22.54 billion, but the rate of growth slackened further to 3.94 per cent as outbound shipments declined across major sectors.

These include gems & jewellery, ready-made garments & textiles and pharmaceuticals.

Imports in July 2017 posted a sharper increase of 15.42 per cent to $33.99 billion with rise in gold, petroleum, pearls and precious stones, machinery and iron and steel, according to an official release from the Commerce & Industry Ministry.

This widened the trade deficit to $11.44 billion during the month compared to $7.76 billion in July 2016.

Exporters blamed the slowdown on the appreciating value of rupee and the liquidity crunch faced by units following the implementation of the new Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime.

“The liquidity crunch should be immediately addressed by providing across the board offsetting of high cost of credit, timely carry forward of taxes from pre-GST and expeditious refund. Besides high cost of credit which has been blunting the competitive edge of our exports, restriction on inter-State job work from unregistered suppliers are also some of the other major issues which should be looked into by the government,” pointed out Ganesh Kumar Gupta, President, Federation of Indian Export Organisations.

The fact that rising value of rupee is adversely impacting the bottomline of exporters is evident from the trade data which reveal that in rupee terms export growth has actually turned negative, said TS Bhasin, Chairman, Engineering Export Promotion Council.

Although exports of engineering products have been increasing modestly for the past few months, Bhasin said it was largely due to a pick up in base metals and rupee valuation was a big concern.

Other major commodity groups which posted a growth in exports in July 2017 over the corresponding month of last year included petroleum products, organic & inorganic chemicals, cotton yarn, fabrics and made-ups, handloom products and marine products.

Total exports in the period April-July 2017-18 posted an increase of 8.91 per cent to $94.756 billion compared with $87 billion in the same period last year. Imports, in the first four months of the fiscal, grew 28.30 per cent to $146.25 billion as against the comparable period in the previous fiscal.

Trade deficit in the April-July 2017-18 period nearly doubled to $51.5 billion compared with $26.99 billion in the same period last fiscal.

Oil imports during July 2017 posted a 15.02 per cent growth to $7.84 billion while non-oil imports, too, grew at a similar level of 15.55 per cent to $26.14 billion during the month.

During April-July 2017-18, oil imports grew 20.87 per cent to $31.02 billion. The growth in non-oil imports during the first four months of the fiscal was 30.46 per cent higher at $115.23 billion.

While exports in April-March 2016-17 posted an increase of 4.71 per cent to $274.64 billion compared to the previous fiscal, it was after two years of continuous decline.

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