WASHINGTON: The fall in global commodity prices and sluggish global demand have resulted in a sharp fall in India’s agricultural and processed food exports in the first two quarters of the current fiscal.
The export of agricultural produce and processed foods, which had seen a phenomenal rise for a few years to FY14, shrank by more than 20% during April-September, 2015 in comparison with same period last fiscal.
The exports have declined to Rs 51, 788 crore in April-September, 2015 from Rs 65,350 crore achieved in the same period last fiscal. The realisation from the shipment of rice (basmati and non-basmati, buffalo meat, guar gum etc. have declined sharply in the current fiscal.
“In many of the commodities, including basmati and non-basmati rice, while the volume of exports have increased during the first two quarters of the current fiscal, the realisation has decline sharply,” a commerce ministry official told FE. The official said that the decline in agricultural commodities shipments also reflect an overall decline in the exports of other commodities.
The realisation from the shipments of key agricultural commodities — basmati rice (-11%), non-basmati rice (-11%), buffalo meat (-9.7%) and Guar gum (-62%) — have declined in the half of the current fiscal in comparison with the same period last fiscal.
According to the ministry official, average realisation from basmati rice exports has fallen from $1,295 per tonne in FY14 to around $950 a tonne in the current fiscal. Even in the case of non-basmati rice, the realisation has declined by more than 11% to R8054 crore in the April–September, 2015 period compared with same period last fiscal.
Overall, rice exports from the country declined by more than 11% to Rs 20, 363 crore in April-September this year, while the volume of grain shipment has seen a sharp increase by more than 51% to 5.5 million tonne.
The shipment of buffalo meat, the single largest export item from the agricultural sector in the last fiscal, has also declined by close to 10% to Rs 12, 171 crore in April-September 2015. In the case of fresh fruits and vegetables, the export realisation in the two quarters of the current year have declined by 7% to Rs 3491 crore in comparison to last fiscal. The realisation from Guar gum, mostly used in US- based oil exploration companies, has shrunk by more than 62% to Rs 1,861 crore in the first half of the current fiscal.
Meanwhile, the agricultural and processed food exports development authority (Apeda) has identified 20-odd clusters located across the country for sustaining growth in the exports of food products. These clusters include those for basmati (Haryana and Punjab), buffalo meat (western Uttar Pradesh), grape and wine (Nashik region, Maharashtra), pomegranate (Satara and Pune regions of Maharashtra), dehydrated onions and garlic (Gujarat), poultry or egg (Namakkal, Tamil Nadu) and mango pulp (Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra).
