Export competitiveness patterns in Indian industries

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to measure and analyze industry export competitiveness of India and it tries to achieve this by presenting a multi‐dimensional framework for measuring and illustrating industry export competitiveness. Design/methodology/approach – The framework considers industry specialization, industry export growth rate, and relative export market share for a dataset of 97 different Indian industries over a five year period (2001‐2005). Findings – The analyses identifies four different types of industry groups, namely domestic static, domestic dynamic, global dynamic and global static. The result shows that the majority of Indian industries are dynamic and growing faster than the world export growth rate for the period of study. A total of 40 percent of India's industries are more global, in terms of industry specialization, compared to the world average, with such highly specialized industries as silk, gums, carpets and textiles, floor coverings, pearls, precious stones and metals. The authors show that industry specialization leads to dominance in worldwide export market share. India's global dynamic industries are mainly in the raw materials, commodities and skilled manual labor rather than high tech or manufacturing sectors. Research limitations/implications – The framework allows us to measure and illustrate industry export competitiveness and permits an intra‐country comparison, a comparison of various industries of one country, or permits an inter‐country comparison, a comparison of one industry across different countries. Practical implications – The framework should help policymakers, government officials, industry associations, and company executives to assess their export competitiveness and focus on protecting or promoting certain industries by directing scarce resources to sectors where they may count the most. The findings of the study can also be useful for international bodies such as UNCTAD and world‐bank in identifying regional industry that can foster growth of trade and economies in the South‐Asian region. Originality/value – The framework used is conceptually innovative and applicable to a variety of contexts for modeling industry export competitiveness. The framework also facilitates inter‐ and intra‐country export benchmark analyses.