If you are someone looking to start business with India in relation to export of products from India, then this article is for you!
In this article we will study about the list of products exported from India every year, also we will learn about the modern approach of some famous economists towards trade. And finally we will share with you highlights about some great companies who export such products and have established himself worldwide.
Our list is extensive and updated regularly, so you can be sure you’re getting the most accurate information possible. But before moving on to the list of products India exports, it is essential to know the current status of trade and business in India. So let’s get started!
India and its bond with Foreign Nations in Exporting Products
India’s export development can be accredited in part to the advanced economies’ strengthening, which has resulted in a jump in global import demand. The depreciation of rupees has resulted to be a gift in disguise since it has increased the international competitiveness of Indian commodities produced in labor-intensive industries such as textiles and clothing. India is also pursuing free trade agreements with the European Union, Australia, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the Gulf Cooperation Council. Any such agreements reached in the coming months will provide more access to Indian goods.
Export Industry in India- Some Recent Development
In the recent years, it is noted that the PLI schemes, which were recently established, will also aid growth, notably in the mobile, electronics, and pharmaceutical industries, as increased output will result in more exports. In the face of this new world, the outmoded mixed economy of India in 1991 faced a dire economic crisis, with barely enough foreign reserves to finance three weeks’ worth of imports. A thorough understanding of the balance of trade is needed to appreciate the importance of prioritizing the national export trade.
Modern Economists and Their Approach Towards Trade and Business- An overview
To an extent, this holds to this day, but economists’ attitudes towards the balance of trade have shifted since writers like Adam Smith and David Hume argued that the exchange of goods for bullion was the only thing that validated the value of bullion and that an excess of gold and silver in circulation would only serve to devalue the currency in the internal economy, resulting in increased prices of domestic goods. This would have the effect of making foreign goods cheaper to import, resulting in a normalization of the balance of trade in the long run.
Among more modern economists Milton Friedman deemphasizes the importance of the balance of trade, once more arguing that “pieces of cheaply made paper” are exchanged for goods that have actual value and utility. However, the advantage of bustling export trade is that it has historically encouraged growth in domestic industry, resulting in higher employment.
The emergence of service-oriented economies in the first world has reduced the emphasis on exports. Exports do still constitute a substantial portion of the GDP of developing and resource-rich countries like India, and a study of a list of products exported from India shows that the Indian economy of today is a far cry from the agrarian economy of yesteryear, despite projections showing that about 65% of the nation’s population still lives in rural areas.
List Top 14 Products Exported from India
A study of the list of products exported from India today will also show us the changes that have come about in the Indian economy since then. Here is a list of 14 products that India exports:
Engineering Goods
The single largest category by grouping is “Engineering Goods”, covering everything from heavy industry products like iron, steel, and other metals, to instruments involved in industrial manufacture, and goods for the automobile industry. In the early post-pandemic days, disruptions to the work cycle had affected industrial production globally, and the value of India’s engineering goods exports had fallen from a 2018-19 high of about $81 Billion to $75 Billion and $73 Billion in 2019-20 and 2020-21 respectively. In the financial year 2021-22, the resultant international demand from the backlog of production and the increased production capacity from the lifting or normalization of covid restrictions led to an explosive 52% increase in the export of engineering goods, valued at approximately $111 Billion.
This unprecedented growth pushed engineering goods to the top spot in the list of products exported from India. The combination of cheap labor and good relations with the West may allow India to corner a larger part of this market that would have previously been commanded by other export-oriented countries like China and Israel.
Petroleum Products
The second-largest category by grouping is that of petroleum products, which covers a wide variety of goods from automotive fuels like petrol, diesel, and gasoline, to home and industry use goods like Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), naphthalene, and lubricant, as well as more exotic goods like jet fuel. India is Asia’s second-largest refiner of petroleum after China and is the fifth largest exporter of refined petroleum as of 2020, valued at more than $26 Billion in 2019-20.
However, with climate change looming large in the public consciousness, and the unreliability of oil prices in the wake of global conflicts, an over-reliance on petroleum products may come to haunt India shortly. Thankfully, to this end, the national investment in renewable energy has been consistently increasing over the last few years, with $14.5 Billion worth of investment in the sector in the financial year 2021-22.
Gems and Jewellery
Third on the list of products exported from India are gems and jewelry, with India being the fifth largest exporter globally, valued at $25.3 Billion in 2020-21. India is the single largest exporter of cut and polished diamonds, and they accounted for almost 65% of the country’s gem and jewelry trade, followed by gold jewelry (nearly 25%) and silver jewelry (about 6%). Although exports from the industry had seen four straight years of decline beginning even before the Covid-19 pandemic, a limited global economic revival, aided by the efforts of the Gem and Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC), has brought about tremendous growth, with the value of exported gems and jewelry projected to have reached $40 Billion in 2021-22.
The export of gems and jewelry may likely have outpaced that of petroleum products to become the second-largest category. Interestingly, it is projected that Indian women collectively owned about 21,733 tonnes of gold as of 2020, while only 197,576 tonnes of gold had ever been mined in the world. By this estimate, Indian women hold 11% of all the gold in the world, when even a body such as the US Central Reserve only holds about 8133 tonnes of gold, less than half the amount held by Indian women collectively.
Organic and Inorganic Chemicals
Fourth on the list of products exported from India are organic and inorganic chemicals, industries that are concentrated in Maharashtra and Gujarat. Several of the organic chemicals exported have wide-ranging uses in pharmaceuticals or plastic production, including acetic acid, citric acid, formaldehyde, acetone, etc. Many of the inorganic chemicals exported have been used in the cleaning industry, in the production of paints, or something to do with the automotive industry. These include red phosphorus, caustic soda, calcium carbide, soda ash, and liquid chlorine.
All in all, over 175 countries imported Indian chemical products in 2021-22, with a value of more than $29 Billion. Although this has often been cited as a 106% increase since the 2013-14 figures of $14.2 Billion, it must be noted that figures were higher in 2018-19, 2019-20, and 2020-21, at $37.2 Billion, $36.1 Billion, and $36.6 billion respectively, according to the Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics. China and the US were the two largest importers of Indian chemicals.
Drugs-and-Pharmaceuticals
The fifth-largest export by category comprises drugs and pharmaceuticals, an industry that rapidly came to the forefront in the aftermath of the pandemic. Even pre-pandemic India had played a vital role in the global pharmaceuticals and vaccines industry. India is responsible for about 20% of the global generic drug exports, and reportedly supplies about 40% of all the generic medicines in circulation in the US. India’s vaccine production capacity is so prolific that the World Health Organisation (WHO) routinely sources about 65 – 70% of its vaccine requirements from the country. The highly regulated US market was the largest importer of Indian pharmaceutical goods, accounting for 29% of total exports in 2021-22. The aftermath of the pandemic saw an increase in the value of Indian pharmaceutical exports from 20.70 Billion dollars in 2019-20 to 24.62 Billion dollars in 2021-22.
Cotton Products
India’s seventh-largest export category comprises cotton products and includes yarns, fabrics, handloom products, etc. The Indian cotton industry employs about 60 million people, and the low cost of labor grants Indian cotton and cotton products a price advantage over those produced in countries like the US, Brazil, or Australia, increasing their export potential. Cotton products routinely comprise between 2-3% of the total value of India’s exports in a given financial year, and in 2021-22 rose to 2.61%, with a value of $9.86 Billion, as compared to 2.16% in 2020-21 with a value of $6.32 Billion. Bangladesh, China, and Vietnam collectively account for about 60% of India’s total cotton exports.
Electronic-Goods
Sixth on the list of products that are exported from India are electronic goods, the value of which came to $12.4 Billion in the financial year 2021-22, an 88% increase from the 2013-14 figure of $6.6 Billion. A seemingly outrageous claim from the Electronics and Computer Software Export Promotion Council projects the potential for more than 14-fold growth by 2025, to $160 Billion in electronic goods exports, provided the industry receives long-term policy support. This would necessitate the implementation of a wider-ranging performance-linked incentive scheme and an industry-wide phased manufacturing program.
Unfortunately, a great amount of the waste generated by the consumption of these electronic goods overseas (generally labeled e-waste) is disposed of irresponsibly. Several first-world countries, and especially the US, end up shipping e-waste overseas to developing countries that have less stringent legislation regarding the disposal of electronic goods. India is the second-largest receiver of such waste, behind only China, and ends up filling entire landfills with castoff electronic goods rather than sustainably recycling them. This is bound to have long-term negative consequences for public health, as both India and China have shown unusually high soil concentrations of heavy metals like lead and mercury that could lead to muscle degeneration in adults, and birth defects across the population. Adequate steps must be taken to deal with the proper disposal of e-waste, even as we ramp up our production of electronic goods.
Ready-Made Garments (RMG)
Eight on the list of products that are exported from India are Ready-Made Garments (RMG), made from a variety of textiles including wool, silk, cotton, and synthetic textiles, though cotton is the predominant raw material used in Indian production of RMG. While India is the second-largest producer of silk in the world and produces 95% of the global hand-woven fabric export, the country is only the fifth largest exporter of RMGs in the world, as other Asian countries like Bangladesh, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, and China, have all attempted to corner the global market through intensive government investment in the industry.
Marine Products
India’s ninth-largest export category comprises marine products, primarily frozen shrimp and frozen fish. The pandemic brought about a reduction in global demand for seafood, with the value of exports in 2020-21 a mere $5.95 Billion as compared to 2019-20’s $6.68 Billion. Nevertheless, India remains among the top 5 fish exporting countries in the world, and the second-largest fish and aquaculture producing country. The total marine and inland fish production of India in 2019-20 was 14.16 tonnes, about 7.56% of the total global fish production for the year.
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Plastic and Linoleum
Tenth on the list of products that are exported from India is the category comprising plastic and linoleum, an industry that employs around 4 million people in India. Though India’s plastic exports are dwarfed by those of China – which produces a tenth of the world’s plastic by value – the industry has experienced significant growth, going from exporting $7.5 Billion worth of goods in 2020-21, to about $9.8 Billion in 2021-22.
Leather and Leather Products
Another vital products exported from India is that of leather and leather products, with shipments to the US, Germany, the UK, and Italy comprising nearly half of the country’s leather exports. With the global post-pandemic recovery, demand for leather has risen, as has the value of India’s exports, going from $3.68 Billion in 2020-21 to $4.87 Billion in 2021-22, a 32% increase.
Agricultural Seeds
India plays a major role in the export of oilseeds and agricultural seeds, with oilseed exports amounting to nearly $1.24 Billion in 2020-21 and agricultural seeds amounting to about $75 Million in the same period.
Tobacco
Though worldwide trends have shown a decrease in tobacco consumption according to WHO from 32.7% of all people older than 15 in 2001 to 22.3% in the same demographic in 2020, the presence of tobacco in the list of products exported from Indiais still strong, amounting to a value of $838 million in 2021-22.
Incense Sticks
The value of the Indian export of incense sticks in the financial year 2020-21 was $90.64 Million, and presents an interesting opportunity for the expansion of a traditionally religious commodity to serve foreign aesthetic sensibilities profitably.
Kunal International india as a leading exporter in India
Kunal International Company- India is working day and night to smoothen the process of product export from India. The company is leaving no stone turned to ensure smooth delivery of the product without causing any damage to the product. They have established themselves as a pioneer in their respective domain with the potential to supply a significant volume of goods within a specific time frame. They are known around the globe for their professional manpower, affordable pricing, timely delivery, and well-trained staff.
Conclusion
A glance at this list of products exported from India shows that though the primary industry is still vital to the Indian export economy, especially with non-manufactured goods like marine products and raw cotton, there has been significant growth in specialized industrial sectors such as the export of engineering and pharmaceutical goods. At least some part of the growth in value of petroleum product export may be attributed to the volatility of crude oil prices, but steady investment in the sector has certainly yielded results. There is an apparent need to diversify the economy away from particularly price-sensitive commodities, and to pivot towards more consumer-led commodities, such as manufactured and value-added goods. Hope you found this article helpful and informative.
The single largest category by grouping is “Engineering Goods”, covering everything from heavy industry products like iron, steel, and other metals, to instruments involved in industrial manufacture, and goods for the automobile industry. In the early post-pandemic days, disruptions to the work cycle had affected industrial production globally, and the value of India’s engineering goods exports had fallen from a 2018-19 high of about $81 Billion to $75 Billion and $73 Billion in 2019-20 and 2020-21 respectively. In the financial year 2021-22, the resultant international demand from the backlog of production and the increased production capacity from the lifting or normalization of covid restrictions led to an explosive 52% increase in the export of engineering goods, valued at approximately $111 Billion.
This unprecedented growth pushed engineering goods to the top spot in the list of products exported from India. The combination of cheap labor and good relations with the West may allow India to corner a larger part of this market that would have previously been commanded by other export-oriented countries like China and Israel.
