Barter trade catches up in India

The current global recession has fueled barter trade and the trend is gaining momentum in India as well, a top industry official said.

"In the current economic downturn, the global barter exchange companies are growing by 15 to 60 per cent and the same trend is fast catching up here in India too," bartermaniac.com CEO Vipul Rawal said here.

"Businesses are becoming more receptive to the idea of barter. The slowing economy has certainly helped grow the barter exchange," Rawal said.

Trading activity has almost doubled since last year, mostly in the past few months. A lot of business owners are looking for different ways on how they can save cash, as well as continuing to market to new customers.

What makes this (barter) concept unique is that besides goods and commodities, it facilitates bartering and giveaways of services and even concepts, he said.

According to the statistics, barter is still just a fraction of Indian trade. Nearly 30 per cent of world business is barter and 65 per cent of Fortune 500 companies engage in barter in one form or another; whereas, Indian barter is a mere 10-12 per cent of trade.

America's Universal Barter Group claims 65 per cent of the companies on the New York Stock Exchange are involved in barter.