India’s Exports Rise For Fifth Straight Month; Up 4.3% In January

India's exports rose for the fifth straight month by 4.3 percent in January to $22.1 billion mainly due to increase in shipments of petroleum products, engineering goods and iron ore even as trade deficit widened to $9.84 billion.

Gold imports slipped by 29.94 percent to $2.04 billion in January from $2.91 billion in the same month last year as demand declined following cash crunch post demonetisation.

As per the data released by the commerce ministry, growth in exports last month was lower than 5.72 percent recorded in December.

Exports totalled $220.92 billion for the April-January period of the current fiscal, up about 1 percent over the year-ago shipments.

The data revealed that imports widened to $31.95 billion in January, up 10.7 percent from the same month last fiscal.

Higher imports took the trade deficit to $9.84 billion as against $7.66 billion in January 2016.

The data revealed that iron ore exports jumped over 10 times to $184.43 million in January year-on-year.

Export of petroleum products increased from $2.08 billion to $2.69 billion, a rise of 28.96 percent.

Shipments of engineering goods from India in January rose to $5.45 billion, up 11.89 percent.

Non-petroleum exports in January were valued at$19.42 billion against $19.11 billion year-on-year, an increase of 1.6 percent.

Non-oil imports during January were estimated at $23.81 billion.

The ministry, quoting latest WTO statistics said the growth in exports is positive for the U.S. (2.63 percent), EU (5.47 percent) and Japan (13.43 percent) but China has exhibited negative growth of (-1.51 percent) for November 2016.

Meanwhile, services exports during December 2016 were valued at $13.8 billion registering a positive growth of 3.49 percent as compared to growth of 1.72 percent during November 2016.

Imports during December 2016 were valued at $8.29 billion registering a negative growth of 0.35 percent in as compared to positive growth of 8.37 percent during November.