Continuing its declining trend, India's exports shrank by about 20.19% in May to US $22.34 billion, marking a fall for the sixth straight month. The slump in exports is mainly due to global slowdown, dip in crude oil prices and rupee appreciation.
In May 2014, the country's merchandise exports stood at US $27.99 billion. The last time exports registered a positive growth was in November last year when it expanded 7.27%.
The main exporting sectors, including petroleum products, gems and jewellery, engineering and chemicals reported a negative growth in April.
Imports, too, declined 16.52% to US $32.75 billion. Trade deficit narrowed to US $10.4 billion in the month under review compared with US $11.23 billion in May 2014. Oil imports dropped 40.97% in May to US $8.53 billion. Non-oil imports too came down by 2.24% to US $24.21 billion.
Gold imports, however, grew 10.47% to US $2.42 billion in May.
During April-May 2015, exports fell 17.21% to US $44.4 billion. Imports, too, shrank 12.2% to US $65.8 billion, resulting in a trade deficit of US $21.39 billion in the first two months of the current fiscal.In March, country's exports contracted 21%, the biggest fall in the last six years.
India has missed the annual exports target of US $340 billion for 2014-15, Last year, exports stood at US $310.5 billion.
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