25. The Performance of India’s Merchandise Exports: An Analytical Perspective

India’s external sector recovered magnificently from the crisis of 1991, after economic reforms were put in place. However, of late, the health of India’s external sector raises some concerns. In this paper, we focus on the performance of India’s merchandise exports. The assessment of export performance is done in the context of (i) price competitiveness of India’s exports; (ii) level of economic activity in the rest of the world; (iii) composition and diversification of exports; (iv) import intensity and technology embedded in exports; and, (vi) direction of exports. The econometric analysis dealing with the determinants of exports uses quarterly data for the period 1996-97Q1 to 2021-22Q4, as the quarterly GDP data for India for the period prior to this are not available. The paper uses the time-series analysis: Unit Root Tests, Cointegration, and Vector Error Correction methods in the econometric analysis.