1Professor and HOD of Economics, Avinashilingam Institute for Home Science and Higher Education for Women, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India, 641 043
2Associate Professor of Economics, Avinashilingam Institute for Home Science and Higher Education for Women, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India, 641 043
World economy has witnessed a paradigm shift towards market oriented economic policies since 1990. This in turn with the implementation of New Economic Policy in India has helped it to gain access to ‘world markets, modern technologies and collaborations'. Foreign trade has become an effective instrument of economic growth and employment generation (Mathur, 2009). Since 1991, the Government of India has introduced a series of reforms to liberalize, privatize and globalize the Indian economy, with emphasis on external sector. The new trade policy abolished the import licensing with respect to import of most machinery, equipment and manufactured intermediate products. A number of duty remission and exemption schemes were in place to facilitate exports. India's foreign trade policy modifications brought out the importance of increasing exports and facilitate those imports which are essential to stimulate the Indian economy. For example, there was reduction in the amount of paper work required to obtain export finance or permission to export. Private sectors were encouraged to enter into foreign market. The problems of exporters are seen immediately and data collection and dissemination has improved. Against this background, this paper tries to analyse the export-import structure of India since 1991 with the following objectives.
