India’s October exports at $23.5 billion, grow nearly 10%

Signalling a clear reversal of the earlier continuous decline in Indian exports, official data on Tuesday showed these grew for the second month in a row at $23.51 billion in October on the back of a good showing by the jewellery and engineering sectors.

Exports thus registered a healthy 9.59% growth over that recorded in the same month last year at $21.46 billion.

However, cumulatively for the April-October period, exports were down 0.17% in dollar terms at $154.9 billion, as against exports of $155.2 billion over the same period last year, as per data released by the Commerce Ministry.

The government said there was growth in exports for US (0.20% ), EU (5.78% ), Japan (10.03% ) but China exhibited negative growth (-3.01% ) for August 2016 over the corresponding period of the previous year, as per latest WTO statistics.

“Non-petroleum exports in October 2016 are valued at $20.80 billion against $18.92 billion in October 2015, an increase of 9.9 per cent,” a statement said.

Imports during the month in question at $33.67 billion, were 8.11% higher than the imports of $31.15 billion in October 2015.

Consequently, the trade deficit in October this year at $10.16 billion witnessed an 4.8% rise, compared to the same month last year at $9.69 billion.

Cumulative imports for April-October were worth more than $208 billion, which was a 10.85% fall from over $233 billion worth imports recorded for the same period a year ago.

With global oil prices climbing back to near-$50 a barrel levels, India’s oil imports during October 2016 were valued at $7.14 billion, which was 3.98% higher than oil imports valued at $6.87 billion in the corresponding period last year.

Non-oil imports in October rose by 9.28% to $26.53 billion, from $24.28 billion in the same month of last year

The trade deficit cumulatively for April-October also declined to $53.16 billion against $78.24 billion in the same period of 2015-16.