Despite border standoff, India-China trade goes up to over USD 67 billion in first half of 2022

BEIJING: The India-China trade is on course to cross USD 100 billion for the second consecutive year as it has gone up to USD 67.08 billion in the first half of this year amid a big surge of Chinese exports, official trade data released here said on Wednesday.

China's exports to India have gone up to USD 57.51 billion, up by 34.5 per cent last year while Indian exports to China fell to USD 9.57 billion, a decline of 35.3 per cent compared to last year, according to the trade data released by China's General Administration of Customs (GAC).

The trade deficit at the half-year mark stood at USD 47.94 billion.

Last year, the India-China bilateral trade hit a record high of over USD 125 billion crossing the USD 100 billion mark in a year when the relations touched a new low due to standoff by the militaries in Eastern Ladakh.

China's exports to India last year went up by 46.2 per cent to USD 97.52 billion while India's exports to China grew by 34.2 per cent to USD 28.14 billion.

The trade deficit for India grew by USD 69.38 billion in 2021.

In May, China insisted that it is still India's biggest trade partner in 2021-22 as per its figures, referring to reports that the US has unseated it to take the top slot and attributed the "disparity" to different methods of calculating the trade volume by New Delhi and Beijing.

"According to the statistics of Chinese competent authorities, bilateral trade volume between China and India stood at USD 125.

66 billion in 2021," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a media briefing when asked about reports of the US overtaking China to become the largest trade partner of India in 2021-22.

"China remains the largest trade partner of India and for the first time the bilateral trade exceeded USD 100 billion in 2021," Zhao said.

"The disparity in trade figures published by China and India is a result of different statistical measurement scales," he said.

Overall, China's foreign trade of goods jumped 9.4 per cent year-on-year to 19.8 trillion yuan (about USD 2.94 trillion) during the first half of the year, according to GAC data.