Impact of trade liberalisation policies on the coconut export from India

The present study analysed the impact of trade policies on coconut economy of Kerala based on the secondary data from Coconut Development Board (CDB) and Export-Import data bank of Government of India. Exponential growth function, Cuddy-Della instability index and Revealed Symmetric Comparative Advantage (RSCA) were used to compute the growth rates, instability indices and comparative advantage, respectively. Though trade liberalization adversely affected the coconut farmers during the initial phase of liberalization, it subsequently increased the opportunities of the Indian coconut sector to compete in the world market. Compared to Period I (1980–81 to 1993–94), a significant improvement in the coconut export was observed during Period II (1994–95 to 2007–08) and Period III (2008–09 to 2016–17). The high growth rates of coconut products together with low instability indices in the export revealed the prospects for Indian coconut sector in the global market during the post liberalization period. The value of RSCA revealed that India lacked any comparative advantage of coconut export in Period I. While in Period II, the export of coconut and copra possessed a comparative advantage from 2002 and 2005, respectively, and maintained the comparative advantage throughout the Period III. The result indicated that India must give much effort to increase the export share of coconut, copra and other value-added coconut products to augment the foreign earnings.

Highlights

A significant improvement in the coconut export was observed during post liberalization period.

India lacked any comparative advantage of coconut export during the pre liberalization period.

Coconut and copra export possessed comparative advantage during the post liberalization period.