Growth and Determinants of India’s Export: The Role of World Demand and Competitiveness

: This paper compares India’s export growth in 27 commodity groups using SITC classification with the growth of world export for the period 1970-71 to 2002-03. The paper analyzes the movement of share of these individual export items in the world market. It also measures the extent of diversification using Gini-Hirschman index of concentration. These disaggregated export figures are then used to compute an overall index of world market condition and competitiveness. A second-stage regression analysis, taking these computed indexes of world market condition, competitiveness and diversification as explanatory variables, reveals that the major factors explaining the variation in India’s overall export performance are world demand and the competitiveness of Indian exports in the international market. Thus, the paper attempts to find a linkage between the disaggregated export performance and the overall export growth.