Exports show balanced growth in traditional and sunrise sectors during the current fiscal

rThe fiscal year 2021-22 is expected to end with merchandise exports of US$ 400 Bn. As this would be on a high base for FY’ 2022-23 unlike last year, said FIEO President, Dr A Sakthivel. Thus, export growth of 30-35% on such numbers would be difficult particularly as additional exports may require augmenting the capacity as well. Moreover, the spectacular increase in global trade by about 22%, buoyed by high prices of commodities, as witnessed in 2021 will not be there to provide the tail wind to our exports. However, at the same time, since our share in global trade is still less than 2%, we still have a long way to go. Much will depend on whether we would be able to contain Covid-19 through massive vaccination across the globe and be able to create required capacity, which will decide whether we should look for 15-20% growth or even more for the next financial year, added Dr Sakthivel.
FIEO President further added that we expect the global consumption to go up substantially in 2022, albeit the pandemic is controlled. The good thing with our exports has been a very balanced growth across sectors both in traditional exports as well as sunrise sectors of exports during the current fiscal. Therefore, in the next year as well, we feel that exports growth will be widespread and exports to NAFTA, Europe, Middle-East, Oceania will continue to boom particularly as we should look at concluding Free Trade Agreements with UK & UAE soon and CEPA & CECA with Canada & Australia respectively in 2022, said Dr Sakthivel.