The New Trends In Direction And Sourcing of Indian Imports

Posted by yashi ganguly on May 30th, 2018

Since our independence in 1947, India has steadily moved on the path of self-reliance and strengthening its economy. The ‘make in India’ pitch of the Prime Minister NarendraModi is indeed a revival of commitment to make India self-reliant. When India became independent the world had just seen the Second World War and the world was gradually getting polarized in two blocs; capitalists and communists.

 Indian leadership though towed a non-aligned line but was indeed inclined towards the then Soviet Union. This led to over-reliance of Indian imports on Russia which supplied almost everything from tanks to goods of public consumption. The Indian importers indeed were importing from Russia and distributing and selling in the Indian market. The import data of the country till the 70s suggest that India had sourced most of its goods from Russia and its allies.

However, things started changing as the communism collapsed and the Soviet Union disintegrated. Now the picture has changed completely. At present we get our imports from almost all the countries of the world. For the purchase of machines and equipment, we depend mainly on OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries and East European countries. 

For the supply of food grains and petroleum products, we depend on OPEC (Oil Producing and Exporting Countries) countries. The OECD countries supply the largest part of our imports. In 1997-98 out of the total imports of Rs.1, 51,553 crores, the imports of Rs.75,593 crores were made (49.9%) from these countries. Other important suppliers of our imports are USA, Belgium, Germany, Japan and Britain.

Indeed the decision to import should be based on the merit of goods like quality and price and not on other political or other considerations. We now import different goods and services from different countries of the world. The USA has become one of the biggest trading partners of India but there other new trading partners who have also emerged on the scene. The Import data of India reveal that Chinese items have become very popular in the country and Indian importers are happy to import the cheap goods from the Chinese exporters which have a huge demand in the country.

**India Export Import Data; Post 2004 as per notification no 128/2004 does not have names of Indian   companies.

**India Export Import Data is available from Jan-2010 to 26th November-2016.