India's trade deficit with China widens to $12 billion in Jan-May 2013

02 Jul 2013 Evaluate

Rising trade deficit with China has become a concern for India, as the India-China trade deficit increased by 34 percent to $12 billion in the first five months of the year and in last year it had touched $ 30 billion mark. India's overall share in Chinese exports has dropped to under 1 percent from 1.33 percent earlier. For the first five months, trade volume too declined by over $2 billion compared to last year.

India’s main items of exports like cotton, iron ore and copper continued their downward slide. In overall exports to China, cotton and copper declined y-o-y by 40 percent to $1.39 billion and 24 percent to $688.53 million, while Iron ore declined sharply by 76 percent to $595.42 million respectively. On the other hand, Chinese exports to India remained consistent, rising by 2.7 percent year-on-year.

However, the government is concerned over the declining India’s exports to China and has discussed the issue with China and had asked to provide more market access to Indian goods to arrest the widening trade deficit trend. India also demanded China to open up IT and Pharmaceutical sectors which will offer great potential for Indian products.   

Both the countries has set $100 billion trade target by 2015, however, it seems difficult to achieve unless China opens up to Indian products in a big way. The India-China bilateral trade touched $26.5 billion mark till May. In last year, bilateral trade fell to about $66.7 billion from around $74 billion in 2012.

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