The trade deficit dipped to an 18 month low as exports contracted for the third month in a row by 8.8 per cent to $33.88 billion in February due to slowdown in global demand.

Imports fell 8.21 per cent to $51.31 billion and trade deficit touched a low of $17.43 billion during the month, the trade data released showed. Commerce secretary Sunil Barthwal said that going by the trend, India’s goods and services exports will cross $750 billion in 2022-23.

“We have kept the momentum despite the global headwinds. Exporters have kept the momentum. Services exports are doing extremely well. Trade deficit has really come down. Hopefully, we will be doing better,” Barthwal said.

He added that the ministry has started the exercise to fix the target for the next fiscal also. A. Sakthivel, president, FIEO, said: “We expect 2022- 23 to end up with export of $770-780 billion, which will be over $100 billion as compared to aggregate export of $672 billion recorded in 2021-22, exhibiting a high growth of 15-16 per cent. India is not only one of the fastest growing economies, but also one of the top performing nations in exports as well.”

Aditi Nayar, chief economist, Icra, said: “The merchandise trade deficit dipped to an 18-month low in February 2023, benefiting from a dip in non-oil non-gold imports. Encouragingly, there was a sequential uptick in non-oil exports, and the pace of YoY contraction also narrowed in February 2023.”