Growth, Composition and Direction of Exports: A Case Study of India

External sector of India has performed well as India's exports grew at an average rate of 13.66% during the study period. Among all the 21 classified commodity groups, exporting arms and ammunition ranked first with a growth rate of 18.36%, transportation equipments and mineral products also showed impressive growth rates. The performance of India's agricultural exports has, however, been not that satisfactory and their share in overall exports witnessed a decline. Increasing overall percentage share of manufactured products such as pearls, precious or semi precious stones, metals, machinery and mechanical appliances is a tremendous achievement for India's export sector and needs special attention. On the other hand share of textile and textile articles which were one of the most important commodity groups in total exports declined from 21.11% in 2003–04 to 11.04% in 2012–13. In nutshell, lot of major changes took place in the composition of exports from agricultural products to manufactured exports in overall exports earnings. Though the share of U.S.A declined during the recent few years, even then it remained on the top as number one destination for Indian exports in terms of relative share in India's exports and it can only be compared to UAE whose export share has increased from 8.0285% in 2003–04 to 12.1049% in 2003–04. However, India has been unable to make a strong dent in the concentration of its exports in terms of commodities as well as export destinations. The directional change towards developing countries can be considered as an achievement of India's exports sector during the study period.