Indian trade deficit widens as export growth decelerates

Trade deficit for February widened to US$15.2bn or 9.7% of GDP.

Morgan Stanley noted that according to trade data released by the Ministry of Commerce, seasonally adjusted exports fell by 1% MoM in February 2012 as compared with a growth of 5% MoM in January 2012. On a YoY basis, export growth (in dollar terms) slid to 4.3% YoY in February compared with growth of 10.1% YoY in January 2012.

Import growth steady: On a YoY basis, import growth (in dollar terms) remained relatively steady at 20.6% YoY in February 2012 compared with 20.3% YoY in the previous month.

“While exports have been trending in line with our expectations, import growth remained due in part to higher oil prices. The trade deficit tends to improve seasonally over the QE March. However, given the trend in trade deficit for January and February, we believe that the current account deficit will remain high in the March 2012 quarter in the 2.5-3% of GDP range. We believe the government needs to reduce the support to domestic consumption by cutting expenditure growth meaningfully. Loose fiscal policy and low real rates have been at the core of persistent high trade and current account deficit,” the brokerage said in a research noted dated March 12, 2012.

Reaching the people who run Asia's businesses is harder than it used to be.

Inboxes are crowded. Attention is short. The executives you most want to reach — the founders, CFOs, and operators who actually move budgets — are the hardest to find through the usual channels. If you're building a company, a category, or a reputation, you already know this.

We've spent twenty years building the room they read. Singapore Business Review is where senior decision makers in Singapore and across Southeast Asia come for business coverage they can't get elsewhere — in print, online, and in person at the summits and roundtables we host across seven markets.

If you have something these readers should know about — a point of view worth publishing, a product worth their attention, an event worth their time — we'd like to hear what you're trying to do.

Book a meeting

| Or download the media kit (PDF)

240,000 senior readers quarterly in print Top 1,700 Singapore companies reached

7 markets across Southeast Asia