Indian Agricultural and Processed Food Products

Wheat, jaggery & confectionery, animal casings, dried & preserved vegetables, fresh vegetables, floriculture were the main source of export earnings during last decades. The extent of growth in value terms has been invariably higher than the amount of growth in quantity terms except in case of jaggery & confectionery, alcoholic & beverages, and milled products. Wheat topped the list both in export earnings and quantity exported with 63.10 per cent and 53.08 per cent annual growth rates, respectively. Instability indices for both export earnings and quantity exported, were highest for animal casings (183.75%) and (172.90%) indicating that animal casing was most vulnerable commodity in terms of export earnings and quantity exported. Guar gum recorded least instability (9.73%) in terms of quantity exported while export earnings instability was observed least (9.13%) in mango pulp. The instability has been by and large higher for quantity exported than the export earnings with some exceptions like guar gum, dried nuts, fresh grapes, buffalo meat, groundnuts, other cereals. In terms of value of exports, the year 2001-02 was a year of export earnings diversification as evidenced by very low value of Herfindahl (0.02), Hirschmann (0.15), and Gini-Hirschmann (0.30) measures, respectively. In terms of quantity exported, year 2000-01 observed highest diversification while 2002-03 recorded commodity concentration (reduced diversification) in quantity exported.