Growth in gold, crude oil imports sees three-fold rise in India's trade deficit

Key highlights:

• India's trade deficit rises to $13.24 billion on sharp rise in gold, oil imports
• Gold imports sees three-fold rise during April
• Crude oil imports grew by 30.12% in April

India's trade deficit also witnessed about three-fold increase to $13.24 billion mainly on account of sharp jump in gold and crude oil imports during the month.

"In continuation with the double digit growth exhibited by exports during March, exports during April have shown growth of 19.77%," the commerce ministry said in a statement.

India's imports too jumped 49.07% to $37.88 billion last month from $25.4 billion in April 2016.

Gold imports rose three-fold to $3.85 billion in April compared to $1.23 billion in the same month last year.

In April, petroleum, textiles, engineering goods and gems and jewellery shipments recorded a growth of 48.77%, 31.72%, 28.21% and 15% respectively.

The other sectors that helped boost exports include chemicals, iron ore, marine products, cashew, oil meals, iron ore and plastic.

Further, oil imports grew by 30.12% to $7.35 billion. Non-oil imports too rose by 54.50% to $30.52 billion.

For the entire last fiscal, 2016-17, exports saw a growth of 4.71% to $274.64 billion as against $262.3 billion in 2015-16. Imports dipped 0.17% to $380.3 billion, lowering trade deficit at $105.7 billion against $118.7 billion in 2015-16.

Further, services exports in March increased by 8.57% to $14.179 billion.

"The net export of services for 2016-17 was estimated at $65.21 billion, which is lower than net export of services of $69.41 billion during 2015-16," it added.

"The implementation of upcoming GST and release of the revised Foreign Trade Policy will give further push to export growth," said FIEO President Ganesh Kumar Gupta.