India continued to defy a daunting and persisting set of global challenges to world trade well into 2024, to post a robust export performance with its merchandise trade logging the highest monthly dispatches in the current financial year so far at USD 41.40 billion
in February 2024, an increase of 11.86 per cent year-on-year growth over USD 37.01 billion in February 2023. Even as UNCTAD flagged a “highly uncertain and generally pessimistic,” outlook for 2024 — in its report released on 11 December 2023 — citing factors like ongoing geopolitical tensions, escalating debt, and widespread economic fragility, India navigated the stormy waters to also take its overall exports — which includes a combination of merchandise and services shipments — in February 2024 to an estimated USD 73.55 billion, exhibiting a positive growth of 14.20 per cent over February 2023.
Merchandise imports also grew at USD 60.11 billion in February 2024, showing an increase of over 12 per cent as compared to USD 53.58 billion in February 2023, the latest Commerce Ministry data shows. According to Commerce Secretary Sunil Barthwal, the surge in exports has come amidst a difficult set of circumstances led by tight monetary policies in the Western world and, fall in commodity prices for a considerable amount of time. Though the government had, a few months back, sensed green shoots of recovery, Barthwal admitted that the export growth in February had surpassed all expectations. “If you look at the 11 months of the financial year, this is the highest export growth we have achieved in both merchandise and overall,” says the Commerce Secretary.
To add to this very heartening development, there are positive signs that India’s exports of this current financial year may even beat last year’s record. There has been a fair amount of speculation on this, agrees the Commerce Secretary, pointing to the February export figures, which if taken cumulatively, show that India has overshot last year’s figure.
This, according to Barthwal, allows room for optimism that India will close financial 2023-24 with overall exports higher than last year’s record exports. “We will be crossing that record which we achieved last year and last to last year. That trend continues despite so many difficulties,” says the Commerce Secretary.
Ashwani Kumar, President of, FIEO concurs that February exports surged impressively by 12 per cent despite the Red Sea crisis, tight monetary stance by the developed world, and falling commodity prices. “The last time when the figures showed such a higher growth was in March 2023, when it was at US$ 41.96 billion,” recalls Kumar who credits such an impressive increase in overall exports