New Delhi, July 19: India’s exports grew by 30.4 per cent in June mainly due to a low base last year. This is the eighth consecutive month, when exports have seen a positive growth.
“It is good news but still not great news. It is good that the things are going right for a change but don’t read too much into it,” said the commerce secretary, Mr Rahul Khullar.
He said that in June 2010 India clocked exports of $17.75 billion but it is still less than $19.2 billion in 2008, before the Lehman Brothers failure pushed the world in to the financial crisis. “So the exports are not still back to the pre-crisis level,” said Mr Khullar.
However, he added that growth rate in some sectors is so large that “there is a reasonable hope that there is some sort of turn around happening and we will have to
watch a little more carefully before we can declare that the turnaround here is for good or not.”
The sectors which posted healthy growth engineering (90 per cent), oil products (66 per cent), jewellery (24 per cent) and chemicals (41 per cent). While the growth in the export of readymade garments is 14 per cent less than last year.
Imports grew by 23 per cent to $28.3 billion in June, widening the trade deficit to $ 10.55 billion.