India's exports rise by 9% to $14.6 bn

India's exports grew by 9.4 per cent to $14.6 billion (around Rs 66,400 crore) in December over the previous month on the back of strong growth in pharma, engineering and auto components sectors, Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma said on Monday.

"We have registered exports of $14.6 billion in December, which is a growth of 9.4 per cent over November. Sectors which have contributed to the growth are pharma, engineering, automotive components and chemicals," Sharma said.

Exports in November 2009 had increased to $13.19 billion from $11.16 billion a year ago marking a trend reversal of decline that had set in since October 2008 due to widespread recession in key global markets.

Although the country's exports have moved to a positive terrain in the past two months, the economy is yet to recover from the losses resulted from 13 months of continuous fall in exports, Sharma said, adding that export-growth is expected to maintain momentum moving ahead.

However, the government cannot be complacent upon the positive numbers as this could be on account of base-effect,

Sharma said. "We have to see the overall scenario," he said. On rising food prices, Sharma said that zooming food price-inflation remains as a major concern to the government and in some cases there have been speculative build ups. The Minister, however, ruled out importing wheat and rice in the immediate future.

However, various measures taken by the policy makers are expected to yield results in the foreseeable future, he said. Attributing the current surge in food inflation partly to high sugar prices, the minister said that the government has taken a number of steps to ease the inflationary situation.

"It is true that we have shortage of pulses. This time sugar prices have also pushed up inflation. Measures taken will help ease the situation," he said.

Also, given the good prospects of Rabi crops, the government is hopeful is that food prices will come down in the near future, Sharma said. Consumer price inflation increased to 15.65 per cent in November.