April exports up 30% to $40.1 bn; trade deficit widens to $20.11 bn

Merchandise exports grew 30.7% on a year-on-year basis to over $40.1 billion in April 2022. Merchandise imports also rose 30.9% to $60.3 billion in the month. With this, the merchandise trade deficit for the month increased 31.5% to $20.11 billion against $15.29 billion in April 2021, the data released by the commerce ministry shows.

"After a record performance in the last financial year, the exports continued robust growth in April 2022 with merchandise exports scaling a new high by crossing USD 40 bn. This is an increase by over 30% vis-à-vis April 2021," the ministry says in a statement.

As compared to the previous month's merchandise exports of $42.2 billion and imports worth $60.74 billion, the exports and imports declined in value in April. In March 2022, India's trade deficit in merchandise stood at $18.51 billion vs 13.64 billion in March 2021.

The services sector exports in April grew 52.87% on a YoY basis to $27.6 billion, while imports rose 61.87% to $15.57 billion. The net of service for the month grew 42.61% to $12.03 billion in April 2022 vs 8.44 during April 2021.

The overall trade exports, including merchandise and services, stood at $67.79 billion in April 2022 vs 48.8 billion in April 2021, which is a growth of 38.9%. Imports, on the other hand, grew 36.3% to $75.87 billion in April 2022 vs $55.66 billion in April 2021.

The overall trade deficit for the period grew 17.83% to $8.08 billion in April 2022 vs $6.86 billion in April 2021.

Notably, the country's petroleum and crude product imports in April grew 87.54% to $20.1 billion vs 10.7 billion in April 2021. Among commodities, silver recorded the biggest rise in imports at 820.04%, while machine tools imports rose lowest at 4.26% YoY. India's fertilisers, crude and manufactured product imports also grew 219.23% YoY to $376.8 million. India imported vegetable oil worth $1,746.27 million in April, recording a rise of 35.46% as compared to $1,289.13 during the same period last year.

Gold and transport equipment recorded negative growth at 72.35% and 21.21%, respectively.

The Centre says petroleum products (127.69%), electronic goods (71.69%), cereals (60.83%), coffee (59.38%), processed food (38.82%) and leather product (36.68%) exports led the way in achieving the "record performance", adding that services sector also performed extremely well.

Non-petroleum and non-gems and jewellery exports in April 2022 were $28.46 billion, registering a positive growth of 19.89% over $23.74 billion in April 2021. The imports in this category were $35.68 billion in April 2022, up 34.37% over $26.55 billion in April 2021.