India's Foreign Trade - October 2013

India's foreign trade data for October 2013 was released today. 

Trade balance as well as exports performance has been improving for the past couple of months. 

Exports during October 2013 stood at US $ 27.2 billion (Rs.168031.71 crore) which is 13.47 per cent higher in Dollar terms (31.86 per cent higher in Rupee terms) than the level of US $ 24 billion (Rs. 127431.81 crore) during October, 2012. 

Cumulative value of exports for the period April-October 2013-14 was US $ 179.3  billion (Rs 1069226.68 crore) as against US $ 168.7 billion (Rs 918270.21 crore) registering a growth of 6.32 per cent in Dollar terms and growth of 16.44 per cent in Rupee terms over the same period last year.

On the import side, the report reads:

Imports during October, 2013 were valued at US $ 37.8 billion (Rs.233073.43 crore) representing a negative growth of 14.50 per cent in Dollar terms and a negative growth of 0.65 per cent in Rupee terms  over the level of imports valued at US $ 44.2 billion (Rs. 234597.63 crore) in October, 2012. 

Cumulative value of imports for the period April-October, 2013-14 was US $ 270 billion (Rs. 1598772.73 crore) as against US $ 280.7 billion (Rs. 1527088.62 crore) registering a negative growth of 3.80 per cent in Dollar terms and growth of 4.69 per cent in Rupee terms over the same period last year.

So the general trend is that exports are increasing both in dollar and rupee terms and imports are decreasing, leading to better trade balance. Oil imports have not decreased. In fact, they increased by around 3% over last year (cumulative from April-Oct), but other imports (including Gold) have decreased over the period, by around 7 percentage points, leading to such favorable figures. Current account deficit looks comfortable for the time being. 

The summary table is copy-pasted below for quick reference:

India's foreign trade data - October 2013