although India has begun exporting quite a bit
it obviously it could do far better.
In fact, the previous, one of the previous graphs
showed you that Indian sort of industries is almost sort of stagnating.
Well, there is plenty of opportunities in that area where India could increase its
manufacturing activities, and hopefully from there then export as well.
But India doesn't do very much of exports of manufacturing.
Whatever exports of manufacturing it does, they're fairly on the low-end
of the scale, except for you know,
a few automotive components which are also on the low-end.
But they are doing some exports of cars, for example, which is of course,
a high value manufactured product.
But by and large,
India's exports of manufactured goods is not particularly prominent.
Now, this deficit that you see, so the, the in the curve that you see down below
here, the negative one here, this one over here.
Now clearly, of course, that is indicating the deficit.
Now this deficit seems to be getting wider over time.
Now this is, of course, a concern.
It's a concern only in the sense,
not that India does not have the foreign exchange reserves.
It does, because it is exporting more.
But, what it does indicate also is that India is importing a lot.
And what this graph does not show you is that India is importing a lot of oil.
And this is, of course, a real challenge for
India because India is heavily dependent on imported oil, and
a good share of India's export revenues is used to pay for this oil import.
So clearly there is, there is that energy question.
Just as the rest of the world also has the energy issue ahead of it,
India also particularly has one because it relies heavily on imported oil.
And just to sort of have what it already has,
it has to keep on exporting more and more.
This, of course, is something that the Indian government also has to address.
So but this is rare, this sort of balance of trade stands more or less today.
India does have a deficit.
The deficit by itself is not a problem so long as it is manageable, but
it cannot simply get out of hand.
So when you look at the foreign exchange reserves,
you can clearly see that from from virtually nothing,
India's foreign exchange reserves has gone up considerably.
And it's a fairly comfortable position.
Of course, China has ten times the foreign exchange that India has, but China is also
a very, very different country, so therefore, it's not surprising.
But I think credit must be given to the fact that Indian economy has changed
direction, and clearly it is generating foreign exchange reserves.
But foreign exchange reserves come not only from exports, which it does,
no doubt, but we have also mentioned that remittance income still plays a very,
very important role.
In fact, in the next segment I will have an opportunity to talk about, a little bit
about remittance income, which is sent by the Indian workers working abroad.