1Assistant Professor, Indian Institute Foreign Trade (IIFT), New Delhi, E-mail: jsymss@iift.edu
2Professor, IIFT, New Delhi, E-mail: rakeshmohanjoshi@iift.edu
3Research Associate, IIFT, New Delhi, E-mail: piyali@iift.edu
4Research Associate, IIFT, New Delhi, Email: udita@iift.edu
Online published on 15 February, 2019.
Indian leather occupies a prominent place in the world market, exporting approximately US$4.72billion during the period 2016–17. However, while analysing the trend of India's leather export over more than two decades, we observed that in the post global crisis era, Indian leather industry experienced a significant decline in the world's share of leather and leather goods, especially in the European markets. This entails a deeper product-wise analysis of the sector in comparison with its major competitors in the world market. We used revealed comparative advantage index to examine India's advantage relative to China in the world market of leather and leather goods. The paper also examines major challenges faced by the domestic leather industry of India. It is true that skill upgradation of the sector through implementation of various training programmes is giving an edge to the sector but expansion of employment capacity along with technological upgradation needs attention.
Analysis of leather exports, china's leather exports, India's leather exports, revealed comparative advantage, world trade in leather
