India’s overseas shipments are declining at a slower pace due to government assistance to exporters, according to Trade Minister Anand Sharma.
“The downward trend, hopefully, has been arrested,” Sharma said replying to a question in parliament in New Delhi today. “The figures for the last three months indicate that there is now a turnaround which is visible, primarily because of the various measures that the government of India has taken.”
Exports fell 29 percent in June from year earlier, Sharma said. Merchandise shipments dropped 29.2 percent in May from a year earlier to $11 billion, after sliding 33.2 percent in April, which was the biggest fall on record, according to Bloomberg data going back to April 1995.
The government will officially release export figures for the month of June on August 3.
The slump in India’s export growth is “primarily because of the fall in demand in markets abroad, particularly traditional destinations which includes the Americas, the U.K., the euro zone and Japan,” Sharma said.
Reserve Bank of India Governor Duvvuri Subbarao on June 20 said a pickup in exports is critical for the economy, which is forecast by the central bank to grow 6 percent this year, the slowest pace since 2003.
Stimulus measures including interest-rate subvention, easy availability of credit and a service tax exemption have helped exporters narrow losses, according to Sharma.
Declining exports have resulted in companies cutting 500,000 jobs in 10 industries as the worst recession since the Great Depression forces manufacturers to reduce production, Sharma said.
The estimate of job losses come from a labor bureau survey conducted for the October-December quarter, Sharma said. The survey covered mining, textiles, metals, automobiles, gems and jewelry, transport, construction, computer services, leather and hand-made textiles, the minister said.
As many as 250,000 jobs were added in some industries in the following quarter, he said.
Source : Bloomberg.com