ECONOMY
"That
economics is untrue which ignores or disregards moral values."
- M.K. Gandhi
Because India is largely dependent on foreign purchases for various commodities, including manufactured goods, raw materials, and foodstuffs, its import trade is extensive. Exports of indigenous products also are considerable, but an unfavorable annual balance of trade is a traditional feature of the Indian economy, although the gap was being narrowed in the early 1990s. The United States was India's leading trading partner in the early 1990s, receiving about 16 percent of India's yearly exports and supplying about 10 percent of its imports. Other countries maintaining large-scale purchasing relations with India include Japan, the Commonwealth of Independent States, Germany, Great Britain, United Arab Emirates, Belgium and Luxembourg, Hong Kong, and Italy. Principal suppliers of imports, in addition to the United States, are Germany, Saudi Arabia, Belgium and Luxembourg, Japan, United Arab Emirates, Great Britain, and Commonwealth of Independent States. Ranked by value, the principal exports in the early 1990s were gems and jewelry, engineering goods, garments, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, cotton yarn and fabrics, leather and leather goods, marine products, iron ore, tea, vegetables and fruit, petroleum products, and handmade carpets. Leading imports were petroleum and petroleum products, nonelectric machinery, precious and semiprecious stones, inorganic chemicals, iron and steel, fertilizers, electrical machinery, and resins and plastics. In the early 1990s the country's annual imports cost some $22 billion, and its yearly exports earned about $21.4 billion.
Trade
