Meeting the Challenges of the European Union: Prospects of Indian Exports

Exports play a critical role in the success of India’s new market-driven economic policies, ushered in progressively since 1991. The European Union (EU), which constitutes a major market for Indian exports, has more or less completed the unification of the markets of its member-nations. This has presented both challenges and opportunities for the EU’s trading partners, particularly from developing countries, and calls for changes in the trading environment and trading behaviour. It is in this context that this volume studies India’s trading relations with the EU. Divided into three parts, the volume first outlines the changing policy environment in both India and the EU, while also discussing recent changes in the international environment, particularly the impact of the Uruguay Round. In the second part, the authors rigorously analyse India’s export performance and trade statistics vis-a-vis the EU in terms of growth, composition, market share and other relevant indicators. They identify the commodities which currently dominate India’s exports to the EU while drawing attention to those items whose export potential is yet to be realised. Applying a number of analytical tools, the authors also evaluate India’s competitive strength in the EU market compared to its competitors from other non-EU countries. The final part of the book contains the responses of both Indian exporters and European importers of Indian goods to the various policy changes occurring in India and the EU. Based on their responses, together with the insights obtained from the analysis of trade statistics, the authors suggest in the last chapter a number of policy initiatives–general as well as sector specific–to enhance India’s penetration into the EU market in the emerging environment. Providing a rigorous, critical and integrated analysis of Indo-EU trade behaviour, this book will be of considerable interest to policy-makers, exporters and importers, and to those concerned with North-South trade, economics and business studies.