In order to give momentum to India’s journey to become a USD 5 trillion economy by 2024 on the heels of its rising exports, NITI Aayog, in collaboration with the Institute of Competitiveness, will release the second edition of the Export Preparedness Index (EPI) 2021 on 25th March 2022.
The release of the second edition of the index—the first was launched in August 2020—demonstrates the government’s continued commitment towards promoting competitive federalism wherein each state can identify their export opportunities and challenges.
The Export Preparedness Index ranks all States and Union Territories (UTs) on the basis of their export readiness and performance. EPI 2021 is based on four main pillars: policy; business ecosystem; export ecosystem; and export performance.
The index can be used by States and UTs to benchmark their performance against their peers and analyze the potential challenges to develop better policy mechanisms to foster export-led growth at the subnational level.
India’s export growth
India has scripted history by achieving its highest ever goods export target of 400 billion US dollars. The target was achieved nine days ahead of schedule, a key milestone in the Aatmanirbhar Bharat journey. This is far higher than the previous record of USD 330 billion achieved in 2018-19. Also the stupendous achievement was after COVID-19 crisis, shrinking India’s exports by 60 per cent in April 2020.
Engineering goods exports have gone up by nearly 50 per cent vis-à-vis last year. Higher engineering exports, apparel and garment exports indicate that the misconception of India being a major exporter of primary commodities is gradually changing.
Export of cotton fabrics, handloom products, Gems and Jewellery etc. have registered a growth rate between 50 per cent to 60 per cent.
Agriculture sector has made noteworthy progress, especially during the pandemic, with India emerging as a major global supplier of food / essential agriculture products. Agriculture exports buoyancy is driven by commodities such as rice (both basmati and non-basmati), marine products, wheat, spices and sugar, among others, recording the highest ever agricultural products export in 2021-22.
How states fared in EPI 2020
In the previous Export Prepared Index, most of the coastal states were the best performers with Gujarat, Maharashtra and TamilNadu occupying the top three ranks, respectively. Six of eight coastal states feature in the top ten rankings, indicating the presence of strong enabling and facilitating factors to promote exports. In the landlocked states, Rajasthan has performed the best, followed by Telangana and Haryana.
