India's trade deficit shot up to a 5 month high of $22.12 billion; with imports and exports falling 5-6 percent on falling global commodity prices and some slowdown.

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From January to May, exports and imports have been falling. So the first takeaway is both imports and exports are falling in equal measure.

The second takeaway from the imports and exports is since both are falling by equal measure, it does look like the fall is largely because of falling commodity prices, which is affecting both categories.

Takeaway number three - the export data for the last five months were around $34 billion. That is indicating that at least as of now, the so called global slowdown doesn't seem to be hurting. Exports are not growing but they're not falling either on month on month terms. So if there is a sign of global slowdown, at least it's not affecting just yet, not on the exports. Not growing but not falling.

The month on month imports has clearly increased. May versus January, it's $57 billion in May, compared to just $50 billion in January and February. So the imports are more. Imports are largely machinery, nonmetallic commodities, metallic products, chemicals, all of them used in industry. So clearly, it looks like Indian industry is on a very strong wicket. The last three months are showing higher imports than the previous three. So that's a very positive takeaway.

The other takeaway is on services. In May it has quite clearly declined, compared to what it was in January and February. So it looks like services exports are not increasing as much as one thought they would. They're stagnating or have fallen a little bit compared to earlier this year.

Finally, these trade deficit numbers include imports plus exports. So the trade deficit for May is $10 billion, which is much higher than what it was in January, February and March. Trade deficit has increased and it's increased to almost the same level it was average 2022 — not an alarming number but the thought of coming close to a current account surplus, that the current account deficit is absolutely decimated, those hopes are kind of getting dashed a bit. Those are the six big takeaways from the trade data.

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(Edited by : Pradeep John)