Expressing cautiousness on India’s exports, exporters’ body the Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) has said that the exports growth in the country is likely to slow down in the coming months due to various domestic and global factors. The FIEO President Ganesh Kumar Gupta said Indian exports have always been influenced by the growth in global trade and therefore, the subdued global trade forecast of 3.9% in 2018 and 3.7% in 2019 will have adverse bearing on exports.
Gupta also said in the first five months of the current fiscal, exports have done well, but they are likely to face greater challenges in months to come. He added that the export growth for September to November has to be watched carefully as exports in these months clocked over 25% growth in 2017 and thus would have the disadvantage of high base effect. He further said that the sanctions on Iran, payment problems in Venezuela, huge depreciation of currencies of Argentina, Turkey, South Africa, Russia, Brazil and banking restrictions on large number of countries like Syria, Sudan, Libya, and Iraq are affecting exports.
On domestic front, the FIEO President said flow of credit to the export sector is a huge issue as export credit declined by over 41% in April-June. He said such mismatch does not augur well for exports and thus needs to be addressed immediately and effectively and the GST refund pendency should be resolved immediately. However, he expressed optimism that the country's exports would touch $350 billion exports in 2018-19. Last time in March, exports entered negative zone. It dipped by 0.66% in that month. Besides, exports were up by 16.13% to $136.10 billion in April-August 2018-19.
