NEW DELHI: The country's exports in January rose 10.1% to $25.4 billion, thanks to step up in shipments of engineering goods, gems and jewellery, drugs and pharmaceuticals and leather, and the trend is likely to help the government reach the $300 billion target.

Commerce secretary Rahul Khullar, however, cautioned that 2012-13 would be a difficult year for exports due to the uncertainty in Europe and sluggish global growth.

The pace of exports has slowed significantly from the previous months due to slowdown in key markets for Indian products such as the European Union and the US.

A software glitch last year forced the government to revise some export numbers. In December, exports had grown 6.7% after clocking heady growth in the previous months. "I am being conservative. $295-$300 billion is your strike range," Khullar told reporters. "What you are looking at now, is exports for the fiscal of around $300 billion, imports at about $460 billion with a balance of trade of about $160 billion." Last year, the government was estimating the trade gap to be around $150 billion.

Khullar said achieving 20% growth in exports next year would be good and ruled out any package for the sector. "Consumer and investor confidence are not booming. My fiscal room for manouvering has gone. You have a tight fiscal situation, who is going to give you sops? If you will manage 20% growth in 2012-13, it will be damn good," he said.

Provisional data released by Khullar showed imports in January rose 20.3% to $40.1 billion. During April 2011 and January 2012, exports rose 23.5% to $242.8 billion while imports grew 29.4% to $391.5 billion.

"Imports are still buoyant because of high prices of crude oil and vegetable oil... trade deficit is large but my guess is that it will narrow down in the next two months," Khullar said. He added that several sectors posted robust growth during April 2011-January 2012 period. Engineering exports rose 21%, petroleum and oil products grew 50.1% and gems and jewellery rose 33%.

Drugs and pharmaceuticals grew 21.1% to $10.2 billion, leather rose 23.4% to $3.8 billion, cotton yarn and fabric made-up grew 14.7% to $5.6 billion, electronics notched a growth of 13.4% to $7.3 billion, readymade garments rose 21.5% to $10.9 billion and other basic chemicals were up by 29.6 % to $8.8 billion.

Source :timesofindia.indiatimes.com