April trade deficit widens to $13.25 bn as imports rise 49%

Strong performance by petroleum, engineering and textiles sectors pushed up India's exports growth by 19.77 per cent to $24.63 billion in April.

However, trade deficit also witnessed about three-fold increase to $13.24 billion mainly on account of sharp jump in gold and crude oil imports during the month.

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"In continuation with the double-digit growth exhibited by exports during March, exports during April have shown growth of 19.77 per cent," the commerce ministry said.

The country's imports too jumped 49.07 per cent to $37.88 billion last month from $25.4 billion in April 2016.

Gold imports rose three-fold to $3.85 billion in April compared to $1.23 billion in the same month last year.

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In April, petroleum, textiles, engineering goods and gems and jewellery shipments recorded a growth of 48.77 per cent, 31.72 per cent, 28.21 per cent and 15 per cent respectively.

The other sectors that helped boost exports include chemicals, iron ore, marine products, cashew, oil meals, iron ore and plastic.

Further, oil imports grew by 30.12 per cent to $7.35 billion. Non-oil imports too rose by 54.50 per cent to $30.52 billion.

For the entire last fiscal, 2016-17, exports saw a growth of 4.71 per cent to $274.64 billion as against USD 262.3 billion in 2015-16. Imports dipped 0.17 per cent to $380.3 billion, lowering trade deficit at USD 105.7 billion against USD 118.7 billion in 2015-16.

Further, services exports in March increased by 8.57 per cent to USD 14.179 billion.

"The net export of services for 2016-17 was estimated at USD 65.21 billion, which is lower than net export of services of USD 69.41 billion during 2015-16," it added.

"The implementation of upcoming GST and release of the revised Foreign Trade Policy will give further push to export growth," said FIEO President Ganesh Kumar Gupta.