NEW DELHI: India’s trade deficit hit a fresh high in June at $25.63 billion, surpassing the previous record of $24.5 billion in May, according to the government data released on Monday. While imports increased by 51% year-on-year (YoY) to $63.6 billion, exports grew only by 16.8% to $ 38 billion.
The trade deficit majorly burgeoned on account of high coal imports, which witnessed a growth of 242%, followed by gold and petroleum at 169% and 94.2%, respectively. Meanwhile, the April-June quarter recorded 22% growth in exports and 47.31% in imports on a YoY basis.
Besides this, the value of non-petroleum imports was at $42.84 billion in June 2022 with a positive growth of 36.36% over $ `31.42 billion in June 2021. Also, non-oil and non-gold, silver and precious metals imports also grew YoY by 31.71% to $36.7 billion.
Commenting on the record-high trade deficit, Aditi Nayar, chief economist at ICRA, said, “Despite an expected fall in the gold imports, the merchandise trade deficit widened further to a worrying $25.6 billion in June 2022, with a sequential dip in exports and a rise in the non-gold imports relative to May 2022.”
“With a steady uptick in the size of the merchandise trade deficit in the quarter, we expect current account deficit to more than double to $30 billion in Q1 FY2023, from the modest $13 billion in the previous quarter.”