Quest for value chains and exports

There are critical shortcomings in India's export policy that need to be tackled to expand its share of goods trade. Here are three suggestions that merit consideration

In her excellent article last week, Amita Batra posed the thought-provoking question: “Who will India trade with?” (Business Standard, April 6, 2023). The thrust of her argument was that global merchandise trade was getting increasingly consolidated into three mega-regional trading blocs: North America, European Union (EU) and ASEAN-East Asia.

What is more, in the first two, in response to growing US-China trade conflicts, the Covid pandemic, the war in Ukraine and climate change considerations, “selective and exclusionary trade policies”, in apparent contradiction to the most-favoured-nation (MFN) principle of WTO, were gaining ground at the expense of developing and