Current Trends in India’s Agricultural Exports and Imports

In 2012-13, the share of agricultural commodities and food products in India’s overall export basket was 10.66%.  This figure was around 20% in 1990s while 7.9% in late 2010s. Thus, from 1990s onwards, the share of farm exports in India’s total exports went down, and it has only improved in recent years marginally. The reason is not adverse performance of farm sector but is robust performance of other sectors particularly service sector. Thus, the key reason is that service exports outperformed agricultural exports in last two decades.

The key information about India’s farm exports is given below:

• India’s share in global farm/ food exports and imports is around 2.07% and 1.24% respectively. Thus, India is a net exporter of agricultural products. In terms of global agricultural and food exports, India’s rank is 10.
• The largest export product in farm sector in India is Basmati Rice; while largest import product includes edible oils. Place of marine products comes only after Basmati rice in India’s farm exports.
• India is one of the leading exporters of some farm products such as tea, sugar, oilseeds, tobacco, spices and products with agricultural content (jute, cloth and sugar products).
• In recent times, Buffalo meat and Guar gum exports have seen significant volume growth in exports of India.
• Further, the share of processed food such as mango pulp, dried & preserved vegetables, meat and poultry items has also increased.

Recent Upward trends in Farm Exports

For the last few years, farm exports of India have shown upward trend and this trend is expected to sustain due to several reasons such as reduced transaction costs, time, increased demand overseas and policy impetus to agriculture; sufficient stock of wheat / rice in central pool, increased importance to food processing industry etc.

India’s Agricultural Imports

Although India is a net agricultural exporter; yet a huge burden on India’s import bill is due to agricultural imports. The largest agricultural exports of India are Edible oil; wood products and pulses. India also keeps importing Sugar, onion etc every now and then.  Edible oil is India’s largest import farm commodity mainly because of its higher consumption and lower production.  Oilseeds and edible oils are also essential commodities.