International Trade

ITALY – INDIA

TRADE RELATIONS

1.1 International Trade

In the post-liberalisation period India’s trade has increased almost 9 folds. India’s trade to GDP

ratio more than doubled from 13.1 per cent in 1990-91 to 34.7 per cent in 2007-08. 1 Although

India’s share in the global trade is still small it has improved over the years as shown in Table 1.

In 2007, India’s merchandise global trade has increased to €293 billion from €135 billion in

1997. 2 During the same period India’s services trade increased from €38 billion to €118 billion. 3

In fact, the growth of services trade has been phenomenal. Before 1995, India was a small player

in the global trade in services. Post-liberalization, India’s trade in services as a percentage of

total trade increased from 20 per cent in 1995 to 30 per cent in 2007. Services exports as

percentage of total exports have more than doubled since 1995.

Table 1: Share of India in the World Total Trade

1997

Goods

Exports

Imports

Total trade

Services

Exports

Imports

Total trade

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

0.64

0.84

0.74

0.68

0.85

0.76

0.74

0.84

0.79

0.80

0.86

0.83

0.82

0.91

0.87

0.86

1.05

0.96

0.99

1.30

1.14

1.03

1.39

1.22

1.05

1.56

1.31

1.11

1.81

1.45

0.67

0.91

0.79

1.10

1.27

1.18

1.14

1.31

1.23

1.19

1.29

1.24

1.27

1.34

1.30

1.68

1.61

1.64

2.19

1.96

2.08

2.65

2.33

2.48

2.65

2.40

2.53

2.84

2.62

2.74

Source : BOP (2008), IMF, International Trade Statistics (2008), WTO (2009)

With global integration, India’s ranking among WTO member countries have improved

significantly both in terms of goods and services trade. In 2008, India ranked 26th among

merchandise exporter and 17th amongst importer in the world (Table 2). In services, India ranked

9th largest exporter and 12th largest importer in the same year (Table 3). The comparative

position of Italy among WTO member...