India on cusp of making history, set to achieve $400 billion export target

“India’s merchandise export has reached almost USD 390 billion and will certainly cross $400 billion during the current fiscal,” Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said on Thursday.

New Delhi:Indian exporters are set to make history in the current financial year as the country is set to achieve the target of exporting goods and services worth $400 billion in FY 2021-22, which will be an all-time record. “India’s merchandise export has reached almost USD 390 billion and will certainly cross $400 billion during the current fiscal,” Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said on Thursday.

Citing the latest data, Goyal said on March 14, the country’s export reached nearly $390 billion. Despite the supply disruptions caused by the two Covid waves triggered by Delta and Omicron variants of the Covid-19 virus, which hit the country in April-May last year and December-January period, Indian exporters were able to maintain the momentum throughout the year.

In December, Indian exporters made history when the monthly export hit an all-time high of $37.29 billion. In fact, Indian export has already made history in the current fiscal as it had touched nearly $336 billion in the first ten months of FY 2021-22 which was more than the highest ever export by the country in a full financial year.

Engineering goods

The solid performance in India’s export is fuelled by the increasing export of engineering goods from India. Engineering goods, which include machinery, auto components, parts of ships, and aircraft among others, are the biggest segment of the Indian export basket.

Despite the supply disruptions caused by the outbreak of the Omicron variant in November-December last year, India was able to maintain the momentum in the export of engineering goods, including economic superpowers such as the USA and China.

Auto components

Addressing a program organized by the Automotive Component Manufacturers Association (ACMA) in New Delhi today, Goyal said India’s auto components industry had, for the first time, recorded a trade surplus of USD 600 million.

India’s Automotive Industry is worth more than $100 billion and contributes 8% of the country's total exports and accounts for 2.3% of the country’s. India’s auto industry is set to become the third-largest in the world by 2025.

India’s auto industry and auto component manufacturers were able to maintain solid export despite the multiple challenges such as outbreak of Covid-19 global pandemic, shortage of chips or semi-conductors because of which some manufacturers, including Mahindra, Tata and Maruti Suzuki, had to either suspend or slow down the production at plants.

Indian exporters also faced the challenges of shortage of ship containers and high freight rates, among other things during this period.