India's export growth may slow down in coming months on domestic, global headwinds: FIEO

Exporters' body FIEO Wednesday said the growth of country's exports is likely to slow in the coming months owing to various domestic and global factors.

Indian exports have always been influenced by the growth in global trade and therefore, the subdued global trade forecast of 3.9 per cent in 2018 and 3.7 per cent in 2019 will have adverse bearing on exports, the Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) President Ganesh Kumar Gupta said.

"While exports have done well in the first five months of the current fiscal, they are likely to face greater challenges in months to come," he said.

The export growth for September to November has to be watched carefully as exports in these months clocked over 25 per cent growth in 2017 and thus would have the disadvantage of high base effect, Gupta said in a statement.

He also said that the sanctions on Iran, payment problems in Venezuela, huge depreciation of currencies of Argentina, Turkey, South Africa, Russia, Brazil and banking restrictions on large number of countries like Syria, Sudan, Libya, and Iraq are affecting exports.

On domestic front, he said flow of credit to the export sector is a huge issue as export credit declined by over 41 per cent in April-June.

"Such mismatch does not augur well for exports and thus needs to be addressed immediately and effectively," he said adding the GST refund pendency should be resolved immediately.

However, he expressed hope that the country's exports would touch USD 350 billion exports in 2018-19.

Last time in March, exports entered negative zone. It dipped by 0.66 per cent in that month.

Exports were up by 16.13 per cent to USD 136.10 billion in April-August 2018-19.