India's plastic exports fall 6% as shipments to China, Pak dip

India's plastics exports declined by six percent in the first six months of the current fiscal following a dip in shipments to China and Pakistan, a senior industry official said on Friday. Exports during April-September topped USD 4.32 billion, compared to USD 4.59 billion in the same period in the last financial year, down 5.9 percent, according to Chairman of the Plastics Export Promotion Council (PLEXCONCIL), Ravish Kamath RPT Kamath.

PLEXCONCIL is sponsored by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Department of Commerce, Government of India. Plastic accounts for 2.7 percent of India's total merchandise exports.

The decline is due to a 19 percent dip in the export of plastics raw materials -- from USD 2.23 billion to USD 1.8 billion --, particularly to China, India's biggest market, Kamath told PTI. "The trade war between the US and China has created a very serious impact," he said.

India's plastics exports in 2018-19 were USD 10.89 billion, up 24 percent from the previous year's figure of USD 8. 85 billion.

For the current fiscal, Kamath expects the export growth to be flat. "We should be around USD 11 billion. Because of this trade tension (between the US and China), we expect that the exports would be around the same but the big change will be that manufactured exports or value-added exports will increase drastically," he said.

"Raw materials exports will still fall. We expect raw materials to fall by 20 percent, but manufacturing exports to increase by 20 percent," Kamath added. India's plastics exports to Pakistan were USD 165 million in the first six months of the last fiscal, but that figure has slumped to a mere USD one million in April-September period of the current financial year due to strained relations between the two countries.

PLEXCONCIL is hopeful that India's annual plastics exports would reach USD 25 billion in three years. India's plastics industry is seeing huge growth opportunities in the US market, particularly in the packaging field, because of the sanctions imposed on various Chinese goods by Washington, Kamath said.

The plastic packaging sector, particularly flexible intermediate bulk containers (FIBC or jumbo bags where one can pack anything between 500 kg and two tons), a high labor-oriented product, is witnessing impressive growth in exports to the US. "Five years back, India's share in (plastic) packaging goods market in the US was less than five percent; this year we are at 49 percent. It's growing at a very fast pace. We see very good potential in the US market," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)