Economic Affairs

Agriculture came under the WTO regime in 1995 when Agreement on Agriculture was negotiated. In India, agriculture accounts for about 12% of total exports earnings which implies that uncertainty in the world agriculture market will have a great impact on the whole economy. Several studies have compared the trend of India's agricultural export in the pre and post WTO period but this paper goes a step ahead and apart from comparing the trend, it also brings the commodity wise analysis of agricultural trade in order to have an idea of the changing pattern of trade and most importantly the paper measures the convergence or divergence of agricultural exports over the years through Simpson Index. The study found that in pre WTO period, an attempt was made to achieve specialisation in agricultural exports whereas no such attempt was made in post WTO period. The study concludes that WTO has mixed impact on India's agricultural exports. It has helped India to improve its position in global agricultural exports but it did not allow her to gain expertise in the exports of agricultural products and specialise in the commodity of its comparative advantage.