The fundamental reasons for trading vary across countries and primarily change over time. Our focus of analysis will be the intra and inter bloc-wise behaviour of India's foreign trade with each bloc consisting of group of countries that have some commonalities. Expansion in the trade is essentially attributable to the variations in the characteristics of economies under consideration that interacted with India. This aggregate level information narrated in trade volumes could have undercurrent of various complexities in determining the course of trade including the direction of trade. Therefore, the study attempts to analyze the problems of trade flows including the trend and behaviour of the same with a specific reference to various categories of blocs. It is very clear cut to observe that over a period of time, importance of India's export flows have declined in case of OECD countries while that of OPEC and Developing countries have increased. India's reliance on OPEC and Developing countries has been rising at least in terms of increasing percentage share of imports from these two blocs. As India is a developing country, these increases in imports have to be evaluated with reference to whether the requirement is for imports, production or consumption. Trade policy certainly would try to minimize the import reliance and boost exports as trade account has been unsustainable off lately. Curtailing imports should not be costlier for growth and development. Therefore a very cautious long term and prudent evolution of trade policy is essential.
Bloc-wise classification, Liberalization, OPEC countries, Openness, Revealed Comparative Advantage
