Falling rupee, rising UK and the United States cheer Indian exporters.

NEW DELHI: India's exporters are flush with new orders across sectors, with a weaker rupee making them more competitive in the international markets as demand picks up in the United States and the European Union.

The revival seen in July is likely to be sustained, exporters say, pointing to their order books that are 20% weightier even in what is traditionally a lean season and orders for the next spring already beginning to flow in.

"The recovery in the US economy during the past few months has resulted in a 20-25% rise in our order books for spring demand," said Amit N Goyal, managing director of Sarju International, an apparel exporter to mainly the US and Europe.

This is higher than the Christmas orders in April, when the growth was 10-15% higher compared with the year-ago period, he said.

Sudhir Dhingra, chairman and managing director of Orient Craft, which exports apparels to the US and Europe, said his company had managed to escape the lean season altogether. "Generally, our exports are about Rs 100 crore a month during April-October and drop to Rs 60 crore in the lean season. But, this year, we have not experienced the low season. Sales have remained high even during the lean months," Dhingra said.

The rupee has fallen 12% against the US dollar since May, dropping to a low of 61.4 on Wednesday. This, Goyal said, gave his company an edge of 5-7% in pricing compared with his South Asian peers. India's exports clocked an 18-month high of 11.6% in July, after two consecutive months of decline largely because of a fall in sales of apparel and engineering goods.

The US displaced the United Arab Emirates to become India's biggest export destination in April-June, accounting for about 14% of the total exports. This happened as the US economy expanded at a three-quarter high of 1.7% on a quarter-on-quarter basis in April-June and sales jumped 0.6% in July at US department stores, the biggest gain since March, 2012.

The 17-nation European Union saw output grow 0.3% in the quarter to June, the first quarterly growth since the eurozone slipped into recession in the last three months of 2011. Exporters of leather goods, handicrafts and diamond jewellery have also reported a spike in orders.

"Earlier, the US used to buy mainly from China, but now since China has become expensive some of those orders are coming to India after the revival in demand in the US," said M Rafeeque Ahmed, chairman of Farida group of companies, which exports leather and leather products.

The group has seen 15-20% growth in the Christmas orders compared with the previous year, Ahmed said, adding that it expected more than 20% growth in the coming few weeks, with the footwear products seeing a major jump.

RK Malhotra, chairman of Asian Handicraft, said his company had seen a 20% increase in orders for Christmas and Valentine's Day.

"For big players, the increase is as much as 50% while a few of them are even overbooked," Malhotra said. The gems and jewellery sector has been unable to fully join the party because of the restrictions imposed by the government on imports of gold, but it is seeing an uptick in exports of diamond jewellery.

Source : articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com