NEW DELHI: After growing by a healthy 17 per cent in April-February of 2008-09, India's engineering exports are in for difficult times in this fiscal as the main markets of the US and Europe are in the grip of economic recession, an industry official said.
"Our members feel the current year will be more difficult than the last half of 2008-09," the Executive Director of the Engineering Export Promotion Council, R K Maitra, said. He said execution of the engineering orders take a long time and the exporters are anxious whether they will get fresh orders.
However, in 2008-09, engineering exports outperformed expansion in the country's total exports, which in turn, took a hit in the face of recession in major global economies.
Consignments of the engineering products in the first 11 months of 2008-09 stood at $34.45 billion. The exports are estimated to cross $36 billion for the last fiscal, showing an annualised growth of over 10 per cent even though the last quarter of the year saw difficult times. The March figures are yet to be released.
The country's total exports for April-February period of last fiscal add up to $156.9 billion, a growth of about 7.3 per cent. With March data showing a massive decline of about 30 per cent due to demand recession in the US and large parts of Europe, the annual export expansion for 2008-09 would be just about 3-4 per cent.
Source : The Economic Times