India’s share in global exports remains unchanged in 2013

India’s share in global exports and its ranking amongst top exporters remained unchanged in 2013. Although, the country posted a 5 per cent rise over the previous year, by exporting goods worth $312 billion in 2013, it’s share in world exports remained the same as the previous year i.e. 1.7 per cent. Additionally, the country is ranked 13th amongst top exporting countries as opposed to last year’s ranking of 19, but the improvement is only on paper. This development was on account of the European Union being considered as a single member in contrast to the earlier practice of EU member-countries being ranked separately. However, World Trade Organization (WTO) in its trade forecast report released on Monday, flagged country’s growing Current Account Deficit (CAD) as an area of concern. Besides, it also pointed country’s vulnerability to financial market volatility. The report highlighted that the rise in financial market volatility was most keenly felt in emerging markets with large current account deficits, especially India, where output growth see-sawed from 2.6 per cent in the second quarter to 7.2 per cent in the third, then back to 3.9 per cent in the fourth. Further, this report upgraded the expected world trade growth for 2014 to 4.7 per cent from 4.5 per cent estimated earlier. Nevertheless, WTO expects better growth of 5.3% in merchandise trade for the year 2015.