Trade Articles

India's import of sensitive items have shot up by 11.2 per cent to Rs 9,696 crore in first quarter of year 2008. Last year figure was Rs 8,722 crore in April-July, 2007. The imports of fruits, vegetables, silk, cotton, automobiles, spices, rubber, alcoholic beverages, marble and granite, tea and coffee have shown the rising trend as compare to the same period of the last year. Government is keeping a close watch on the import of sensitive items as they have an imperative bearing on the domestic producers and production."Imports of sensitive items from Indonesia, China, the US, Germany, Malaysia, Thailand, Australia, Egypt, Japan, Korea, the UK and other countries have gone up, while those from Argentina, Canada, Sri Lanka and Brazil have shown a decrease.",the official statement stated. The Department of Commerce track and monitor all the detail about the import of sensitive items. They have given a double digit progress of 11 per cent, which all shows the global spurt in the commodity prices. The gross import of all the sensitive commodities during the aforesaid period in 2008 has been recorded at Rs 42,1541 crore in comparison to Rs 30.6946 crore of the same period in 2007. Thus sensitive items import is constituting of 2.8 per cent and 2.3 per cent of the total gross imports in 2007 and 2008 respectively.

Imports of Eating Products

The shortfall has been recorded in the imports of some sensitive items like edible oil, milk and milk products, food grains on the broader group level. Whereas imports of other sensitive items like cotton and silk, automobiles, fruits & vegetables, small scale industries products, spices, rubber, alcoholic beverages, marble & granite, tea & coffee have increased considerably, stated by the Commerce Ministry. The import of edible oil has seen a diminishing trend in 2008 as compare to 2007. During the same period, the edible oil import has come down from Rs 3,777.8 crore to Rs 3,698 crore. Similarly the crude oil import has come down by 4.7 per cent and in refined oil it has been 19.9 per cent. The Commerce Ministry said "The decrease in edible oil import is mainly due to significant fall in import of soya bean crude oil, which has gone down by 55 percent".

Imports from Various Countries

The sensitive items import from Myanmar, China, USA, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, German, Malaysia, Thailand, Benin, Australia, Japan, Egypt, Ghana, Korea, UK have triggered up whilst import from Argentina, Sri Lanka, Brazil, Canada have come down.

What are Sensitive Items

Sensitive Items are refer to those items which are sensitive for personal use or hazardous for being used.