India`s Foreign Trade : A Study of Trends and Instability in the Post-Reform Period

About the Book :

      In the decades prior to 1991, India followed a highly statist and interventionist development policies leading to a period of a severely distorted production structure. This culminated in too deep economic crises at the outset of the ninety nineties.

Faced with a severe balance of payments crisis, India entered into an IMF influenced structural adjustment program. In addition to the conventional expenditure switching and reducing policies, as part of the IMF agreement, a range of far-reaching economic policy reforms was launched in July 1991 in the external, industrial, financial and public sectors.

Although the reforms mainly dealt with industry and trade policies, these policies do have its impact on the external sector. It is in the context of this that the present study examines the effect of the reforms on the external sector variables like exports, imports, terms of trade etc.

The book is divided in to eight chapters begin with introduction, survey of theories of international trade and the impact of reforms on selected macroeconomic and external sector variables. In the subsequent chapters country group wise and commodity group wise, export growth and instability has been examined. Thereafter, the pattern and behaviour of Indian import were studied with respect to pre and post reform period.

The trend as well as instability in the terms of trade faced by developing country like India in the liberalised regime was also examined.

Lastly, the study has come out with a conclusion that the liberalisation has allowed the Indian economy to attain a higher degree of integration with the world but at the same time the economy has also became more vulnerable to external factors.

About Author :

Dr. Akash Kumra is an alumni of Faculty of Arts, The M.S University of Baroda. He obtained his Ph.D degree in the year 2011 from the same University. At present he is working as a senior Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics, Faculty of Arts. He has to his credit number of research papers published in national and international journals. He also offers his services as a visiting faculty to other educational institutes.

Dr. Dinkar Narsinh Nayak is a first class postgraduate in economics from the M.S.University of Baroda. He obtained his Ph.D from the same university in 1998. He has more than thirty years of teaching experience and he guided number of students in obtaining their Ph.D degree. His work has been published in various international and national journals. He has also presented research papers at national and international conferences. Besides, he has delivered lectures as a resource person at different institutions in the country.