A Study on Export Scenario of Vegetables from India: An Economic Analysis

India is the second largest producer of vegetables, next to China. India’s share is 11.95 per cent of total global production with 204.61 million tonnes from area of 11.28 million hectares. The share of vegetables export in India’s agriculture and related products is 3.30 per cent and share in export of horticultural products is 16.21 per cent respectively during 2021–22. The present study was carried out with a view to analyze the export scenario of vegetables in India. The data were collected and analyzed for a period of twenty years (2001-02 to 2020–21). The compound annual growth rate in export of vegetables was worked out by fitting the exponential function. During the overall period of twenty years, both exported quantity and value of vegetables from India registered a positive trend and the compound annual growth rate was 6.66 and 14.40 per cent for exported quantity and value respectively. Under different component of vegetables highest compound annual growth rate in exported quantity was registered in other fresh vegetables category (10.83 per cent per annum) and in exported value it was vegetable seeds (18.85 per cent per annum). The largest quantity is exported in the form of onions (56.86 per cent) followed by other fresh vegetables (25.14 per cent), processed vegetables (10.47 per cent), cucumber and gherkins (7.24 per cent) and vegetable seeds (0.28 per cent). The share of vegetable exports in total vegetable production was ranging from 1.25 to 2.14 per cent during last one decade. In terms of value Bangladesh was the major importing country for Indian onions, UAE for other fresh vegetables, USA for cucumber & gherkins and processed vegetables and Netherlands for vegetable seeds. Awareness to farmers regarding export specifications and quality vegetable production, increase in infrastructural facilities related to export of vegetables, improved post-harvest technologies, promotion of need based processed products for export, identification of potential and new emerging markets, strict quality control and proper policies related to export of vegetables may contribute to increased foreign trade of India.