heading · body

Transcript

Can India Unlock 500 Billion Export Opportunity Csep

read summary →

TITLE: Can India Unlock a US$500 Billion Export Opportunity? | CSEP Seminar CHANNEL: Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) DATE: 2026-05-15 ---TRANSCRIPT--- Attention please.

Good afternoon everyone and a very warm welcome to today’s seminar titled letting the elephant dance unlocking India’s 500 billion US export opportunity. We are gathered here for an important discussion on India’s export potential and the policy choices needed to strengthen and sustain it. We will begin with a presentation by Baron Pradan, former research analyst at CEP alongside Dr. Sanjay Katurya and Dr. TG Shivasan both senior visiting fellows at CEP. This will be followed by a panel discussion featuring Dr. Arpita Mukharji professor at Ikrier Dr. Prab professor at RAIS who will be joining us shortly and Dr. Pravakar Sahu senior lead at Mutayog and professor at IEG. The session will be chaired and moderated by Dr. Rajesh Chhatta, senior fellow at CCT. With that I now hand over to Dr. Chhatta. Thank you very much. I hope I am audible. Uh good afternoon. Uh we are here to be discussing some a very important topic that because we are already running late. I’ll not take much time on it. Letting the elephant dance unlocking India’s US dollar 500 billion export opportunity. Uh gone through the paper to some extent and find it interesting. uh the I think the order of the day is going to be a 20 minutes presentation by Baron Pradhan, Sanjay and TG uh whichever way you want to distribute it and then at 4:30 we will start uh the panel discussion I will go according to the list uh Arpita Prabhir and Prabakar and then at 5:00 p.m. we will have Q&A. So I’ll be uh somewhat rigid with my time allocation so that uh we can hear everyone well time. Thank you and uh Bern over to you. Okay. Thank you uh Dr. Shhata for this welcome. Uh you call the paper interesting. I was hoping for life changing but uh nevertheless I’ll I’ll begin the presentation. Uh so uh actually Dr. Katura will start us off. Uh uh so Dr. Kurya over to you. All right. Thank you uh thanks Rajes for chairing and thanks to all those who are who have come to listen to us. Uh and I want to thank Arupita Pravakar and Proir for accepting our invitation to be discussant. So uh uh the question is uh why this paper matters now and you know we might say that you know the world is now uh you know in in such a state of flux uh globally in terms of trade that you know you should really be focusing on other things. So uh I want to set that context before I hand over to to Bar. The world really has not declobalized contrary to what we uh a lot of talk around it. It has just become harder to trade, more difficult, more frictions, more fragmentation. Uh I was looking at the latest data yesterday. Services trade uh reached an all-time high as a share of GDP 15.2% in 24 and rose even more in 2025. Even goods trade to GDP the much malignant goods trade grew in 2025 as a share of GDP. Uh so even though world trade goods is world trade in goods is expected to slow but it still grew uh by 4.6% in 2025 and is expected according to WTO economists to slow to 1.9% this year. uh but as I was hinting uh that am amidst all this noise and uncertainty of global trade retreating inward or downgrading trade would be a serious mistake because India’s central challenge is creating more and better jobs and their uh trade is very important and I do want to make uh this important point that this paper is not about day-to-day frictions or the volatility of the global trading system But it’s about India’s long-term constraints. Okay. So, uh when do uh so the uh next next slide please. Ex the export agenda is also a labor market agenda. This I think is is an important is important to establish. While services are a strength and they are becoming very close to now the goods trade overall but we know we all know that they cannot absorb India’s workforce at any scale. uh product a agriculture which is low productivity absorbs 42% of our jobs in India and if you compare um share of employment in manufacturing India is less than 13% versus almost 30% in China and 22% in Vietnam what India needs is uh better jobs formal jobs uh in and which pay wages steady wages and are export linked because that’s where the biggest demand is going to come from in labor inensive sectors and these uh these sectors can create millions of new and better jobs. Uh why is this possible? You might say again because of all these trade frictions. Why is this possible? Next slide please. This is still possible because India’s starting share is so very low. Right? Uh India’s goal should not be to dominate labor intensive manufacturing. I think we we can all agree that in the foreseeable future this is not possible. Uh uh the goal should be to really stop underparticipating in labor intensive manufacturing which it is doing as as our paper will show and Baron will demonstrate. Uh our share in global exports has been around stagnant around 1.8% in goods. uh which shows that there is headroom. If Vietnam, a country of 100 million people can gain market share, India can also do it. Uh provided it remembers uh the the se seeds of its own past success. Uh next slide please. Diversification is actually a strategy in this context. Uh it’s not really a mantra. So uh to you reduce uh you diversify in this case again what we’ve been seeing globally we need now to diversify partners both for exports as well as for imports to reduce our vulnerabilities and I say fortunately we have many missed opportunities right you can look at it the other way the other side of the coin uh missed opportunity also demonstrates there is potential to grow and and the biggest prizes are in India’s neighborhood So uh my my last point Rajes will be that the argument that we have is in numbers is uh we have over $500 billion missed opportunity in goods which are linked to 24 million formal jobs. uh about half of the missing exports in goods are near about in India’s neighborhood and one in three of India’s top exports are losing share in the growing global uh global market. So the point we are going to make or we are making is the elephant’s dance is constrained. These are all self-imposed issues because the uh the the numbers are telling us that these this is possible. If we go if we behave like the rest of the world in terms of our our policies, this is our numbers should be much much bigger. Goods exports would actually more than double. Okay. So I will hand over to Bar. Thank you. Okay. Uh thank you Dr. Kurya for the start. Uh so uh so the basic essence of this paper was to see how like if we are telling that we have to be more export oriented. This is at a time when the world is looking inward and India has been no stranger to this and uh there have been a few successes for India like services exports and remittances which have been consistently very strong for India over the past 30 years. So we then see like how does how much merchandise opportunity is unrealized because most of these high growing nations that we talk about of East Asia they took merchandise exports as the way to move the economies to a very high growth path. So in this paper we first find try to find out how much export potential there is. We use a gravity model uh the ppml gravity model which is the pseudo poyson maximum likelihood uh which allows for having zero flows in our export flows and we then try to decompose it through every corridor and also we map the sectors where India can do better. Then we recommend a few things that could help uh India in achieving that and what are the policy options that uh what are the hurdles and what are the policy options for India to achieve that. So uh just uh because the crowd here is filled with both like people who are experts as well as people who want to learn. So some of it is uh context like in 1980 the global share of our goods and services was just.5%. Which has in has increased by five times to 2.2 5% in 2024 and as like any student would know even a high school student that before 91 we were closed after 91 we opened up our export boom happened between this period 2001 to 2012 that was our biggest export uh era but since 2013 the momentum has kind of softened like uh protectionist policies are coming back into the four and they are getting more traction Uh so one of the few things one of the misconceptions is that India wasn’t an export-led economy like those of East Asia. It might be true on its magnitude but that’s not true like we took exports a lot and when our uh export to GDP ratio was highest that’s when our average growth rate was highest and that has also kind of come down like it has softened a bit. Okay. So uh our sectoral mapping uses a framework called the manding framework. uh it’s a very straightforward framework to see which goods are doing well and which aren’t doing well. So rising stars are those where you are increasing your share and those products are also in like their world demand is also increasing. Simil uh missed opportunities world demand is increasing but you are not achieving those high levels of uh export share in those particular goods. Falling stars again India is gaining shares but their global demand is falling and retreats that both the global demand and India is also losing share in them. So this is a very straightforward way to just understand which products can [snorts] uh and where we are sectorally. So uh uh it would be uh redundant for me to read it out but we some of the following stars are all those agriculture goods like cereals and stuff and we are doing very well in pharmaceuticals and like metallic products but a lot of it is uh let’s say missed opportunities. we are doing uh our textiles industry has facing a mixed opportunity both leather HS42 and HS61 and HS63 and this is a big labor intensive sector so that’s that’s a cause of concern uh [clears throat] we also applied this uh manding framework to regions of the world now India actually this is actually a positive story see that India has seen her export share increase in all the regions of the world. There’s no region that India hasn’t increased just that North America and Europe have seen their shares fall otherwise it’s done. However, South Asia here it will fall down into that yellow uh to the point because in more recent years uh our exports there have reduced as a share. So uh just to compare India with some of our competitors. So Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand were massive export-led economies. Like when you see the graph, it’s always almost over 150%. For a lot of these nations, China kind of busted this myth that a big nation can’t be exportled. like they were this manufacturing behemoth who like used export le growth and India’s has remained low throughout the orange line that we can see we’ll show India it’s a bit tough but anyway uh so yeah so that’s something India where it stands now with its competitors and just to have a more clear comparison is in between India and China. When India reached 773 billion worth of exports, we had a lower level of our exports as a percentage of our GDP. China used that engine much strongly like it was almost 33% when it was at the same level of export value. Similarly, when we reach the same level of GDP as China, uh like China had 3.6 6 and 2007 again their export to GDP ratio is miles ahead of India. So this is a very clear comparison to see where India like we can say in a very like soft terms that India is 18 years behind China. So some of the problems that have arisen regarding uh like why can’t India be this export-led country it’s one is that our protectionist measures have increased now you would say well India is protecting we all have access to export other markets but that’s not the case the learner’s theorem says that import tariffs can act like an export duty and because your input import costs are increasing your export potential your export competitiveness suffers so that’s one thing one of the big challenges there are another protectionist measure that has seen a notable increase has been the rise of QCOs uh like massive increase so this is the first problem uh that India faces like and this is something that India can fix on its own like you can reduce your duties and Uh the second problem is uh that India faces a persistently appreciated exchange rate real exchange rate. Now this might seem surprising right now given how many news articles we are seeing about like the rupee falling and everything but India’s uh rupee has always generally seen uh has been more like we can see from the graph it’s very high and and east Asian nations always try to devalue this their currencies that has been a criticism of East Asian nation But India can’t do that. We and we are not recommending that either. Uh so our best export uh era which was 2002 to 2012 saw a much lower RER versus our worst kind of era 2013 to 24 saw massive. And the more current thing which is since Trump uh Donald Trump has become president of the United States and there has been massive upheaval of uh trade relations all over the world. It has reduced but again nowhere near our like our best era and this thing is happening because of two of our successes. One is consistent remittance flows and two very strong services exports. Again you can’t say oh let’s stop services exports so that we can get our uh area down so that will be wrong. So these are the uh this is another issue that India faces. Uh and lastly is GVC integration. Again this is uh this is not a perfect cause and effect. It is both uh it’s a problem of issue of getting in because once you’re not part of these GBC’s firms kind of consolidate with whatever there is like you getting into these become tougher after some time. So the same thing has happened with India. Our highest uh backward integration was 25% in 2012 and since that peak we have come down to 17% by 2020 which is the latest data and it’s well below our competitors in East Asia and India also is not joining any free trade agreements like ASP or CPTPB which consolidates these firm level linkages. Okay. So yeah. So which sectors saw their biggest loss market share is low complexity uh shares low complexity products. So this is the product complexity index done by Harvard and our labor intensive sectors are the ones which are being hurt like uh textiles and all these apparel sectors footwear whatever and our more complex sectors are actually doing well like if you see uh our heavy machinery and everything but they don’t create enough jobs for our huge burgeoning labor uh posts So uh to find uh the level of potential we used the model if any econometric people want to just look at it it’s good I won’t go too much into it. Uh the findings showed that uh in 2022 our actual good exports was 437 billion and our missing exports was 516 billion. Like the our potential to export is more is double the like actual goods export. And there there’s another thing that we are also missing imports because of our protectionism. imports which can help make us more export competitive are also missing. So around 300 billion of missing uh imports and this level which was found out in 2022 this potential export potential we still haven’t reached by 2025 like we haven’t reached this level yet. Uh it’s kind of reminds me of my school report cards like there was so much pot. The teacher would say there’s a lot of potential but I’m here. So the biggest corridors of missed opportunity happens to be in India’s current neighborhood near neighborhood. And see I’m not making any claims here. The the model is an unbiased adjudicator and our biggest like possible corridor is China with almost 175 billion worth of exports that we can do. Again Pakistan, Bangladesh again huge and this is the big ones because the rest are marginal if anything and they make almost half of our missing export potential of 516 billion. So for all the doom and gloom uh there are some corridors which are better than the baseline uh in our model like the Netherlands and UAE which could uh serve as cases on how on what to do to improve our uh like what markets could be the actionable markets. Uh and again so this uh if uh TG if you want to chime in on this because uh TG did this on the how much export gap is translated into the massive jobs loss. Uh is he is he there self? Sorry I’m trying to unmute myself. Okay, basically the uh the employment implications of the missing export potential uh are done using the OECD’s trade in value added database and uh what we observe is that the uh direct and indirect employment generated uh by the uh export vector uh is available over the years. uh so using the past we have calibrated that the elasticity is about.3 uh using that we have applied the uh export potential export increase calculated by burn using his gravity model applying that uh we derive uh the uh additional employment generation we have reported in in the paper about 24 million now to put to see it in context it’s like a three years of uh addition to uh youthful labor force in India. It’s not a small number. So that is what I wanted to say. It’s basically direct and indirect employment generated by the uh export vector of India by as calculated by the OECD trade in value added database or G bar. Okay. So uh so yeah so uh we then recommend a few policy uh proposals uh one would be to publish a white paper and rationalize tariffs reduce them and like reduce diversion and everything make qos should not be used to like help protectionism they should be a more safety uh objective should have a more safety objective and India should reccalibrate its uh strategy regarding FTAs and recently we have signed like let’s say for ASEP we have FDAS with 14 out of the 15 nations of ASEP and the only one that we don’t have one with is China because we are like worried that they will flood our markets but again if the model if you believe the model we will flood their markets So they should be most scared of us and CPTP again it should be a recalibration uh and there has to be an execution of a neighborhood pivot to understand uh because we are losing out on huge uh uh export potential because of the other concerns we have with these nations. But uh there should be a thought process regarding what could be done. So yeah. So uh I think it ends here. Uh thank you for listening all. Thank you very much for keeping it to time. We are very well in time. And something uh interesting again I will say not uh very interesting is that the potential that is there is double of what we were exporting in 2022

  1. And another interesting feature that we discover is that China that was the fear factor in signing the RF we have a huge potential of exports to China. Uh this is yet another important point of discussion. uh two or three other uh points from your last slide that emerges that isn’t it that for the last many years maybe more than 15 years or 14 years we have been talking about trade liberalization particularly now 2017 18 when uh the tariffs started going up and we know that the e allocative efficiency suffers when we tax the exports through costlier inputs. I’m not supposed to be a discussant so I will be handing it over I I would have said some more points but I’ll say after the panelist or discussants have uh done their job. So Dr. Arpita Mukharji over to you maybe for about uh six to 7 minutes. Yes, that is good enough. First of all, thank you very much for the invite and uh I would like to thank all the authors for the lovely paper, a very thoughtprovoking paper. Uh see basically we are at a time when uh every country and now if Europe comes with industrial accelerator act every country is talking about make in the region make in Europe, make in America, make in India. It all sounds familiar and this paper comes around that time with a vision that probably that’s not the ideal situation. You need to have be a bigger player in the global value chain by uh diversifying your uh by rethinking whether you can export to China, what you can export to China, how you do that, what kind of barrier should be there, what should be done. I completely agree. I read through the paper and I I don’t think you made a presentation but I do agree with your first point that we need to actually first have a vision plan and road map for export. No country exports everything everywhere but they do create a road map. If you look at Taiwan, if you look at Philippines, they’ve created a road map. They have identified products they want to export, services they want to export. Although you say that services export is good. I would say it is on its own but not good. you are exporting only two items out of the immense number of items that you can really export. You are only exporting it as business services. So if you are looking at all these opportunities, you have to really put in a map product by product. Now that is where the document is needed to see where is the opportunity and in which market. Now if I when we were doing the RCF and we were going around you know doing 30 40 50 consultations with the industry the industry kept on telling don’t open it up for China I will die it is cheap import power the moment RAP was signed they said it was good so we actually did a study of the RAP and if you do a study of the RAP and look at any countries you know opening up tariff with the bilaterally with China and within the RC RAP you will see they have given less in the RAF more in their bilateral agreement with China and more in the bilateral agreement with China and a better phasing out of tariff importance is your tariff phasing out period if the tariff has been phased out in the bilateral FDA they have again put the same phasing out with in RFP so whether RIP delivered anything in tariff is questionable nobody has studied that actually the second thing is where actually delivered and what China tried to do was to synergize the rule of origin. It smartly synergized the rule of origin to create the global value chains because for rule of origin tariff is not the only problem. You have to get your arrows sorted so that even if you so that you can bring in stuff and it is not like we were signing FTS during those time and point blank putting down 40% you know rule of origin nobody manufactures 40% value addition if I bring in gens and jewelry and I do 40% value addition how do I do that I don’t I bring in the raw material so we have to think those thought processes that you have to go product by product you have to look at the rules of origin. That is where probably East Asia was doing the job much better than us than we did. Let me give you another example. Nobody gives the example of Korea. When Korea negotiated with India, we said we will not give you zinc. We will not give you steel because we want to be the big player. We will you and Korea doesn’t produce steel. But what Korea did it is set up a simple smelter gave a zero duty to us. We gave them a feed uh phased out duty. They brought in the zinc. They brought in the steel. They manufactured their cars in India because we did not allow them to come in. And now they are a big player. Now we are screaming the players down while they are global player in zinc export. See how they are controlling the critical mineral supply chain which we probably have missed you know thinking when we were in that regime that we missed about the critical mineral supply chain and the controls that they were exerting China’s going to Australia China’s going to these places were a lot related to its critical mineral supply chain so was its BRI we haven’t really thought about that many other countries including us maybe the US went much letter to Africa and other places thinking about the critical mineral supply chain. So that was another miss. The third miss was why while we copied and pasted these zones from China we kind of made them a liberal place that anybody can set up a zone anywhere do anything and neither SEZ unsuccess of SEZ and continuous playing with it till date has been one of the biggest problem probably in India’s goods trade policy we have never used it as a system to or a system to have a integrated growth the last but not the least I think one thing you need to really look into when you study we have all the big players in India you know big companies are coming to India we are having a missing middle and these are the middle is which Vietnam and other countries are attracting now how do I actually attract these midsize farms from every part of the world I’m not talking about any region which accounts for 85% of the global trade you know the bigger ones are in India the Your point is very well taken on the agreements. Now you you have to also see the past agreements were easier to do because they were combining the trade and investment. They had some kind of a GVC in them. The agreements that we are doing now let it be the EU and any other uh there is no investment chapter. So there is no interconnection between part being part of the global value chain or a chain of the EU company. If I want to be a if I want a real investment flow from coming in from the European Union, I need to look at that. Now quality control is a problem in India because we are treating quality control as a import barrier rather than quality control for upgrading the quality. Quality for control for upgrading the quality or matching the quality somewhere to the key export market is not a bad idea. Okay. But if it is just done to you know stop Chinese import then it is a bad idea. So how you impose QCO is more important and because we want to keep it very wishy-washy because we want to do it case by case it has become a problem otherwise uniformity in quality standardization is very good. European Union is imposing one of the highest standards which the entire world criticize but it is not distinguishing it between the imports export and its market. That is the problem that is with our QCO which we really need to look into regarding our neighborhood policy. I think the neighborhood policy needs to be rethink from a long-term perspective. It is stop gap do that now again we opened our investment from China right? So again Alibaba is trying to come in they will trying to come in they will try to go up but you have to also understand one thing that sometimes we are overwhelmed by Chinese successes and China also did certain things which are very amazing but nobody talks about them. China put the restriction on services on the US companies and everybody. China is a very very restrictive market. It only opened up its market in zones. It is not that the entire China is open for all to fle play around. We actually did not do that. We did not use our zones to try out success stories allowing things to happen. Um last but not the least now that we are working very closely with the textile and apparel. I agree that the sector is in shambble but the greatest part is we call them labor intensive. The world is moving towards technology. If you look at your market share gone in gems and jewelry, you lost it in gold to Turkey which is entirely machine made gold jewelry. So we need to really think of the terms that we are using and how we are using them. I don’t think with AI and anything everything is going to be labor intensive. It is going to be steel intensive rather than labor intensive and we need to move into manufacturing processes rather than keeping it variable to quality and standards which is the problem at the present for some of these sectors which is very highly labor intensive but we are not able to think about a uniformity in mechanization and moving up into a skill intensive sector. So I can come back later. So this is my kind of defense for

thank you for being on time and also spelling so many important aspects that you wanted to uh bring uh to the author’s light. I just have one comment before I hand it over to Dr. beer day that missed opportunities can be many and I may remind everyone here that way back in 2019 October there was a high level advisory group committee created at the ministry of commerce almost we did the the paper on why should India be joining the RAP and we were almost close to signing it and suddenly uh couple of days later we discovered that uh you can see it in the newspaper media everywhere that we were about to but we didn’t so missed opportunities uh in in and I’m uh those who have not read might go to WTO center I if there is a high level advisory group report with nine chapters uh put up there second point that burn you mentioned the falling in the falling stars vehicles and auto is a bit bit of you know the falling sectors because as you mentioned uh the issue of tariff jumping argument that we have put the duty on motor cars passenger cars in particulars and by two wheelers at 100%. Sometimes we say this year will be 60 50

  1. So but the automo companies have tariff jumped let let us let us come in come in now protect us. So this is this is a serious argument that needs to be discussed up front and debated but I’m not again uh I’m just stealing some moments between between the discussants uh speak. So Dr. Prabid over to you and you have 8 minutes to go.

Thank you very much. First of all, I’d like to thank and congratulate the authors as I remember coming here uh while they are doing the study namaskar. Ambassador Shhatri who is the person who we consult with him for trade policy and he was also our former vice chairman. It’s opportunity to meet you back here. So thank you. uh now if I may come back to uh the discussion and my observation um I have some comments on the gravity modeling based on the PBML uh which I will briefly touch or if I don’t have a time I will get back to the author the lead author on discussion but look at uh the figure two you know when we talk about mending illustration the study reveals that uh uh there is no missing missed opportunity if there is a region or by country and it has falling stars I ignore the falling stars but uh rising stars no uh which are basically East Asia Pacific South Asia Latin American Middle Eastern North America and if you now this is 1991 and 2003 whole whole period I think India hasn’t you know India has done fairly well you know [clears throat] uh because East Asia Pacific we have any bilaterals South Asia is not working but it used to be cuz period we have taken 91 2003 the region that we haven’t done much and at the moment there are many negotiations going on is the American Caribbean and Middle East and the North Africa. So this indicates clearly you know the study has strong policy implications which will be you know convincing the policy makers those who are dealing with the trade policy. Now point two that letting the elephant dance unlocking India’s 500 billion export opportunity the subtitle is bit confusing we already have last year you know 400 something touching 450 million billion export already achieved perhaps you are talking 516 unmet export missed opportunity so this is something you know commerce secretary So we have already so but the message has to be you know uh you have to perhaps anyway is published but if you are sharing something as you said that white paper maybe this is the one point you know I would like to you know recommend let’s come to as with professor mukhaji’s you know mukhaji’s uh commentary on on your presentations I would also like to add some few Few things is a kind of a future research agenda or adding if you would like to revising in the point three is basically three things which why the major challenges one is is the delayed incentives you haven’t taken any in the gravity model any little dummy variable or any sort of variable in that way to represent uh instant and all but I have uh you know that it has been reported the media and sure the gentleman sitting next to me he knows much better that uh delayed in incentives in terms of remission. If you go to the farm level any medium and small um MSMES you know or the large scales if you remember ignore the large one they they complain to you that time per remission. So there is a huge gap in that plus IGST reimbursement and all those things. So farm level complain that there has been delayed in the incentives. Perhaps this is somewhere I haven’t found it. Second is uh the raw material bottlenecks because of supply chain disruptions. You have taken a variable very much crisis as a dummy variable. labs you did uh but uh a discussion it didn’t come out maybe because of space restrictions supply chain disruption of different types and how this is being you know affecting your value chain very nicely when you said the GVC aspects so this is one raw material bottlenecks competition you know we cannot beat Bangladesh in garments cannot beat Vietnam in garments they are much superior producers Uh so huge competitions uh how we are looking at the uh you know those in the coming next 10 to 15 years quality standards of course uh talking about logistics shipping cost there are tariff and uh protections issues those uh we I mean I was expecting those who need get a space uh you know in a bigger way. Now if I may come to your uh the rabbit mod excellent uh presentations but just for sake of academic discussion I don’t want to you know go in details and discuss more about it is a huge exercise you know I must thank them 4 lakh 25,000 24,000 34 observations huge you know those who are doing econometrics and gravity monitoring in a small tiny person like me you know I I think this is a you know huge exercise they did but if you come to the results you know I think uh you know what you could have added or you have must have done it somewhere kind of robustness checks that if you have not reported here you must have there in your file or computer somewhere that is the results you you’re showing is it the best one or is it a very relative one you know if you are going to publish this or if you are going to have a more discussion table six people will ask you look I would like to look at a relative concept you know you have exercise this one PPML basis because PPML as you know that you have a many zero as he said zero data if you take zero log it doesn’t make any sense when you do a running because the log of zero is no value actually so and if you what we used to do initially 20 years Back when the gravity modeling was introduced we just used to delete replace 0 by one and if you take log of one then it goes to zero actually then the later on in the value addition done in the modeling aspect they said don’t do all this you take the ppml which is if your data is not the normally distributed it is a better model actually so they did an excellent job but uh we may need to discuss more you know on on the modeling part overall you know I looked at more about the discussing more on the your working paper on 117 instead of giving a commentary on the what’s happening in India about on export policy trade policy and other things. Uh I congratulation to all of you and thank you very much for the invitation. Thank you Dr. Day. Let’s move over to Dr. Dr. Pravaka Sahu thank you so much for having me and let me congratulate Boran Sanjay and Mr. and thank you for writing the paper because because of paper I’m here but don’t write too frequently any uh only thing actually uh let me speak as a student of economics not as part of planning ni why so um see you are making very strong conclusions on the basis of uh what do you call which is based on weak foundation let me be little critical in the sense I have serious problem with the gravity equations or gravity models which I was doing 20 years back and let me tell you Bangladesh, Pakistan, China these are neighboring countries but I think exporting to Pakistan is much more difficult than exporting to US. So the distance the language the s thing actually it’s things don’t work out that way. So because all your paper everything works out on that number and that number itself is questionable. Don’t take it as an offense or I’m not here to criticize and then uh coming to some of the points you know I have lot more points on the modeling part but I think we’ll discuss it later. Uh one thing actually I think uh in the paper it comes out very clearly that yes our tariff [snorts] rates are higher than Vietnam, Mexico or even China. But I think over a period of time we have improved particularly in recent years. The numbers the latest numbers I have is like we have the average average applied tariff rates is 12%. It’s close to China is 10%. Uh it’s 10% also in Vietnam and Mexico it’s in 6 to 6%. But where is the problem? Problem actually I think you there you are right that when it comes to the raw materials the capital goods our t rates are higher compared to Vietnam and Mexico. That is where it is making a difference. I think we need to correct and government of India has been working on it. In fact, in this context, let me also focus about the QCOS. Uh you know RP you are right it should not be used to contain imports but there are evidences because I’m sitting and talking to people because of there are improvement in quality across industries. There are few specific cases but I agree with you that is should not be used. In fact we have been making this re recommendations issues have been deferred some are postponed and the implementation is being delayed. So that is where I think uh the the point is well taken. Now coming back to this point that we lost out $500 billion dollar of exports in 2022. Of course that number is questionable. That’s a different thing. But if you look at the trade the way the world trade has been kind of [clears throat] growing over a period of time it was hyper stage between 2002 to 2008 that before the global financial crisis because that is the best growth rate actually world economy ever had and it was all export technology intensive export late thing. After that it slowed down. Then here in the paper also you bring out 99 to 2012 the export growth rate for India was 12.8 right last 5 years we have grown exports 11% CG imports 12%. Okay from 1 trillion total trade we have reached 1.75 trillion last year on an average you can take 11.5%. If you compare the world trade the way it has been growing, we have done exceptionally well. Now of course that number is very different. My my point is I think India’s trade is resilient during this heightened uncertain times. So let us not tell that okay so we lost out. Uh there was a point actually Sanjay G made about the diversification. In fact you know this Harpindel index in one of the publications we bring out that is called trade was quarterly every 3 months we bring out the last quarterly we have estimated it for long term India’s exports is getting much more diversified not imports because given the rigidity of India’s exports sorry imports we are still dependent on the same sourcing partners but export is getting diversified you can see the evidence there uh Then one point that the real effective exchange rate it is because of the ICT exports that we are having surplus in services exports and because of the maintenance no there is another dynamic factor because we have to maintain what is called inflation targeting given that we have trade deficit given that you know kind of you know prices actually go up because of uh exchange rate pass through we have deliberately maintained but still the is less than 100 it is not over 100 so that is not the okay I completely understand the simple basic economics that okay is like higher it’s over valued it certainly actually makes your things uncompetitive like exports but it is not actually that much the case uh I will not talk about the RFP not joining the big boss is here I think they have written nine chapters so I cannot add one more chapter So let me stop there and better in um uh employment again that look that elasticity you have taken it is from World Bank for the period 1919 to 2012 things are getting so dynamic today the production is not a labor phenomena. It is a capital phenomena that elasticity that was applicable 15 years back is not applicable today. So the number itself 500 billion is different and then you get the employment elasticity we lost out. Uh that’s I completely agree that yes labor intensive sectors we have not been very successful. In fact manufacturing is a mixed bag. We have done well in what you call pharmaceutical, electronics, automoils. We have done well and it’s a it’s a different thing that we have done well in the sectors which are kind of value added high value added products not in labor intensive whether it’s a gems and jewelry I was mentioning whether it’s textile it’s footwear leather there we’re not doing well I’ll just tell you actually what uh we need to do now um this uh I think I’ll not get into the China story I think we are kind of dreaming that you know if we do this we do this that will get into China the maximum number of non-tariff measures which are not visible they are there in China you know it’s it’s very very difficult but I’ll tell you a bigger story I think I don’t know whether any of you goes through this trade war but it’s not very important that that how much we lost that we got from the model no it is not what we need to do I think arita was So right that all of these countries they have a kind of strategy in the medium term somewhere actually we not missed out but we didn’t plan that well for example in one of the trade was quarterly we calculated at six digit level what is happening 66% of world trade that amounts to 16 trillion 16 trillion imports by the How much we are getting 0.2 do we mean that we are getting 0.2 share 2% share 0.2% share in 66% of the total world imports. There is a big misalignment between our supply and then world’s demand. Just look at actually and then where we are getting we are getting like we are having 20% share in 3% of world’s imports. So there is a big misalignment when it comes to the structure of the world demand and then our focus on sectors on exports. I think that is something needs to be corrected you know dismissalized and then it’ll come to do I have time maybe a minute or couple you’re a kind man thank you uh now and here some of the sectors we are covering each trade watch quarterly actually it has a section giving a snapshot of India’s trade with the rest of the world and also we cover a thematic area now some of the thematic areas we have covered and some of those actually include labor intensive sect Textile in apparel it is close to 1 trillion. How much do we have? 35 billion. What is happening there? Look in textile there are two two HS 61 and 62 knitted and non-needed and that is 58% of the total and how much we are almost like know having 1.5% there. So we have to align our the industries need to do it. It’s not that the government has to do it actually there are issues logistic issues issues and all that it’s kind of lot of firefighting every time it happens and we try to correct even you know when it comes to the tariffs things are improving um leather and footwear it is 300 billion how much we exporting only 5% sorry 5 billion it is less than 1.9% and it is something like labor intensive and we have the manpower Or in fact this is the biggest endowment India has which no other country has it. We lost out where we are still focusing on the tanning the raw skins and all that but market has really moved away from from labor like in case of foodear it is the Mexico which is doing well. It is labor intensive is not as labor intensive or it is it’s really very dynamic. The dresses actually change much faster than any other sector. So I think what is happening is things in the footwear it is moving to the textile offers it’s the biggest component and there we are not able to do it it’s technology branding market and that is where I think we need to focus on getting the anchor investors Bangladesh has done it because of the reeb lotto and all this anchor investors getting on it of course there are other factors as well you know I can go on talking about James and jewelry this is the last one because uh okay let me stop Yeah, you said you can go on. It’s out very well and uh thank you very much uh to all the discussions. Uh may I give a couple of minutes or few to the authors to respond to the uh comments and then we go to Q&A Sanjay? Yeah, sure. Sure. Thank you. Uh thank you uh Arpita Pravakar Pro for your comments. uh yeah I mean you know there’s not uh let me just take up some of the sort of the big picture issues right so Prabakar mentioned this issue of the numbers and the his sort of lack of uh faith in the in the gravity numbers yes of course these are numbers they are telling the story but remember they are telling us that had we India had we done as well as an average in the rest of the world right uh this is what this is what we should have done right now. Yes, there are once you start getting into individuals, let’s take the story of China which you mentioned. Uh there are a lot of non-tariff barriers but I mean I think it could be part of a systematic policy of India that you engage with China. Can we link the point that Arpita made can we link investment and trade right so we get uh uh you know have access allow a more liberal FDI regime for example uh with a real promise to reduce their the non-tariff barriers that Indian exports undoubtedly face in in China. I think there has to be a really systematic uh uh addressing of the Chinese export opportunity right which is uh I think you know the 175 billion that Baran mentioned right it’s there uh similarly on Pakistan you know China is our biggest I have said this ad nauseium China is our biggest source of imports they’re also our biggest strategic rival perhaps you know in the as articulated by everybody including our you know strategic analysts right yet our biggest s so the biggest source of imports is China why cannot we have the similar kind of approach on trade with Pakistan right so delink the politics and the trade and there you realize the opportunity we have pointed that out earlier in our world bank work with glass half full and so on so the the point on the vision right so this white paper we call it a white paper you can call it what a white paper a vision strategy which can encompass a much broader thing linking not just treating exports as standalone right exports are linked to imports so one has to you know one has to make sure that the that paper or the policy makers understand that linkage you know you cannot have one without the other there is no example uh in the world even China is a massive uh overall import market for the world and that paper can have vision of where do we want to go on CPTPPP uh where do we want to go about on the exchange rate there is no question that so the the remittances and services act as a kind of a Dutch disease this is the point that Rakkesh has been making for a long time right and we have had this bilateral exchanges with him that uh irrespective of where your daily exchange rate goes the point remains that our services and remittances is kind of the act as a tax on the goods exports right because of the excessive uh because we do much better than we should be then predicted on services now as Baron said that doesn’t mean that you should uh reduce services it just means we need to be conscious in our planning about the fact that our exchange rate is somewhat appreciated you know the number we come up I think is 5 to 7% compared to had had we had at a more normal uh level of of exchange rates. Um the I will make one more point u which is about what Arpita talked about labor intensity right u um and I think uh prabakar also had some hints about that I think that look we’ve been talking about automation for a very long time it’s not just AI we’ve been talking about automation in for example in the government sector for for you know last 10 to 20 years but look where Bangladesh is today right Bangladesh laborintensive garments. It is a world beater. Nobody produced as Probir said nobody can produce garments like like Bangladesh does as as cheap as Bangladesh does. Right. So there is a massive still labor inensive opportunity. Yes, there are segments of that value chain that you can carve out and say okay this part for in the interests of quality can be automated. But the by and large where the really the massive uh uh gains are for labor intensive employment those remain those don’t go away you cannot do that very fine polishing of the diamond right u that you can cut it uh but you cannot do the so there is the there is a very huge opportunity remaining in labor intensive and where and where most of our shortfall in our goods exports lies in that space labor labor intensive manufacturing. Thanks. Uh I don’t know if Baron or TGI have any additional things but Dr. TG any comments? Uh I I would like to simply state that this is a paper which is now finished uh as a technical people would like to nitpick endlessly on various aspects of it. I would like to suggest that we all have valid points of view on what is the ground truth. uh I think the major points of the paper that India has plenty of potential still left to export is to be taken seriously. You may disagree whether it’s a 500 billion or 400 billion but it’s this point that we have to take it seriously and that’s the point the paper makes and then say it’s very important for employment generation point of view that’s also there is no uh controversy about it. So it’s it suggests which products and which areas uh we can be uh focusing on. Therefore on the whole I I think I I don’t want to disagree with any of you but these are all just points of view that we have as technical experts but the large conclusions of the paper stand. So I I would like to uh rest my arguments at that. Thank you very much. Thank you Baron. any uh yeah I’ll I’ll just address two things which were very prominent uh one was that uh India is doing like the number was questioned the 516 billion and I don’t have any personal investment in the number but the uh the the point is the model is an unbiased adjudicator it’s not that I made India look bad it was what the numbers said what the numbers spit out and We like when we compare ourselves to other these East Asian nations we will say oh these are small nations they were exporting they had to be export land they don’t have enough domestic demand China actually did it and I’m no fan of China either so the point is that China with like someone made this comment that we can’t compete with Bangladesh or Vietnam in garments for example that was the case for China with many of their exports whether it was South Korea whether it was many other smaller east Asian nations they blew them out the war so it just the historical evidence is there like for us to see and uh even uh like China we can always learn from secondly uh one was this that China has many of these barriers that we can never reach 75 billion which the number says or the model says now again I don’t think like it could be like the model is not the perfect number that I’ll give it could be even more than that like no one is stopping you from that the point that has been made is that when we were like withdrawing for the main bone of contention was China we said they will flood our markets 30 oh sorry 40 years ago in 1980 when China opened up this same worry was with China that US products will flood their markets but what happened China actually took over the US market rather because of the smaller uh like cheaper labor so that’s the thing like there is this just I’ll end with this phrase this is the odia ATM which is like you are scared of the thief so you will eat with broken utensils. That’s not what we should do. We should be more assertive, more strong and that’s what the paper is saying like there is no there’s no like India should not be worried at all. Thank you. Thanks to the authors for com commenting on commentators comments and uh it turned out to be a very interesting rich discussion. I think I’ll now open it up for Q&A questions from from the audience. So I see one hand there. Please identify yourselves uh your name so that talk. Uh hi uh I’m Karthik Kashor. I’m a public policy postgrad and uh I’m actually brief. Yeah, it’s uh it will be a very brief question. So, uh it’s a first of all a wonderful paper. Uh one comment the author just now made by comparing China’s 1980s situation. It’s like comparing apples and oranges. I’ll be very honest. uh please uh just a humble suggestion read very recent Apple in China book by Maggie uh Patrick Maggie and you’ll understand uh uh how China basically stopped every investment that was coming in and uh it was arm twisting them into investing their own uh areas. It’s not same uh as a democratic country. It’s a socialist market economy. So one that second uh I just want uh the authors to take two parameters into account. First uh the top 10 countries that comprises of the country share in incremental world imports of manufactured goods and the increment uh and the country share in incremental world demand which is basically exports and MBA and you get that. Yeah. Thank you. In the top 10 just I’m finishing the sentence. I want to make this point with respect to the ASEP. Uh in the top 10 you won’t find even one country from the southeast except in the demand you’ll get Singapore. So where exactly is India gaining from ours? Thank you. Thank you. Three questions I’ll take. So Ganesh your hand and then yourself. Um hello uh yeah my name is Ganesh. I I’m at CE as an associate fellow. Um firstly, thanks for the life-changing presentation. Um I have a quick couple of questions. Firstly, um regarding India’s uh unrealized potential for exports, what does it actually mean realistically if India has 500 billion to export? Which countries are importing this $500 billion of India’s uh exports and does that mean other countries will have to reduce their exports? How does that work? Uh second um Netherlands and the UAE I think you mentioned. Uh may I just want to check I think they’re more trading hubs rather than uh actual destinations for our exports. And third um this is just a general economics question perhaps. Uh I’m not an expert on this but wanted your thoughts. Uh would you say to some extent that the services sector in India is causing u something like a Dutch disease uh for the manufacturing sector? Thank you. One more question. Thank you. Do we have online? No. Okay. U Thank you very much uh to the authors for this uh very comprehensive study. Uh I would only make one suggestion uh since you are in your recommendations projecting China as a big export opportunity. uh it may be a good idea to follow up this study with a study on that in particular and I would suggest that you also visit China meet our industrials there and see what is the reality I’m saying this because on behalf of CI I did a study before we joined The title of the study was what should be India’s strategy considering China’s already overwhelming presence in the Indian market and we looked at the figures in so many different tariff lines the Chinese share of India’s imports were very very significant and therefore we had suggested in our recommend recommendation. This was a study submitted in 201718 to the commerce ministry by CI that we should seek certain protection visav tariff concessions that we give to China. uh I am not privy to what really happened in the negotiations because uh what we heard there from was our prime minister saying that a proposal we had put forward some proposal they were not accepted therefore we left ARS I also understand that we had some negotiation with China itself because the other ARS members left the matter to between India and China so you can see the dynamic And therefore there were perhaps very good reasons and in retrospect. I also feel that it was a good decision. We did not join ARS considering what it would have happened uh if if we had allowed because there were some requirements in ARS. While each country could have a negotiated tariff schedule with the we the other countries but there were certain minimum thresholds in terms of what you would do on the day it enters into force and so on and so forth. Even that was very high and ARM’s focus was just market access on goods nothing else. So this is something which is suited to more export oriented economies not to a country like India which had certain other interests like services etc where they were not forthcoming. So all these things have to be understood rather than you know us repeatedly saying we should have joined our we missed the bus. I think this this is a very important perspective and secondly when I went brief no no I I think it is important in terms of non-tariff barriers so as part of the study we had visited China we also had meeting in Shanghai with lot of Indian companies and the simple point was this if you have a primary product if you have an intermediate product you can sell in China. If you have a finished product, forget about the first thing they will ask you is send a prototype and you will not hear any more of it because they will use the prototype to manufacture it themselves. And so if you can even see today AAN country China, if you see their trade relationship, China’s exports to ASEAN goes up. Aan’s exports to US goes up. But Assean’s export to China does not go up. So that is the kind of market China is right. So we have so dealing with this. No, thank you. I think there there has been a lot of discussion very recently on RAP and CPTP. So the opinion is divided. So uh I’m handing it over to the authors to comment on uh these three questions. I’ll take another round. Yeah. So two questions you and DH well like we’ve had some level of overlappingness so I’ll answer that one the thing was what do we uh gain from joining RS and you said like where do we export as a market access like where do we get that so one of the arguments I have for and uh like sir you also mentioned those uh with some level of disagreement that you get market access access for your goods but the first few years maybe Chinese goods come in to India more than we send them the argument you made was that ASEAN countries are not exporting to China and because of uh because of their non-tariff barriers I would suggest that they actually like they’re more competitive on those goods that’s what I believe uh I might be wrong but that that’s what I think because like the structure of China the way it happened it was incredible. Secondly, ASP what we gain from ASP is the next biggest middle class that is coming in in the world is coming in uh this ASEAN region as sorry this ASP region the biggest middle class bigger than US which was the US middle class which was the uh cause of growth among East Asian economies like East Asian economies will export to US middle class will consume it that was the they grew that thing is now shifting eastwards. So if we so the missing the bus is not oh like this is a like stubborn uh stubborn thing I have for myself it’s that it’s the biggest market that will happen. So in these opportunities we shouldn’t let them back even like I also agree that ch the opacity of China is always there like that’s not something I’m disagreeing but yeah Dr. Catura uh yeah thanks Rajes. Yeah. So the yes the world is an unfair place. Nobody disagrees about that, right? And there are some parts of the world that are more unfair than others. But we have to that’s that’s what’s given, right? So we have to make the best of it from our own perspective. How do we capitalize on the opportunities out there, right? So China yes everybody knows and these these facts are true that about the sort of the uh you know China exports and it’s lots of restrictions fine but at the same time it is [clears throat] it is the second largest market in the world right so how do we use it how can we get access I think I think that is the excuse me that’s the point that that we are trying to make here and it is about reooking at the underlying issues in our right what so what are the gains Ganesh asked this point what do we gain right so okay I think the gain is a longer term one it is not merely market access because market access already you have pre-trade agreements with ASEAN and so on it is much more on what Arpita talked about the it is the harmonization of the rules of origin one right so you create a 15 16 countries supply chain with a one set of rules and The second thing very much linked to that is FDI, right? The the fact that FDI and and trade are linked. You create incentives for longerterm FDI coming into our country. That is we all know that’s the long-term way to growth and diversification of the export of the exporting sector. So that I think that is the that is where I would um uh would put the uh the the most of the emphasis right. Uh the yes services do create as I just said they do create a kind of a Dutch disease uh uh and the point is you can’t do it yet you’re not going to say reduce services right services are a big engine of our trade growth and a source of foreign exchange point is understand and appreciate that there is a a a hurdle an additional hurdle for the manufacturing sector to cross because of that because of the exchange rate result of that doing exceptionally well in services and the point about trading hubs uh is that say for example in Europe if you’re doing really well in a particular say Netherlands they’re using it as a kind of hub and spoke as a sub sort of a space for a supply chain hub and then exporting to other other parts of Europe that was the a simple point that we were trying to make there Dr. TG any any comment if you want to otherwise I’ll have another round of questions. You you can continue. I don’t have Okay. Uh and thank you. I think if China is a bone of contention, I think the authors have also suggested movement to CPTP which needs serious research and is is somewhat missing. So I just wanted to I have another round of questions because we have 7 minutes to go. Uh please be brief with your questions. 1 2 3. Okay. Please. Hi good evening. Uh Bina here I’m from J. I’m starting with she raised. Okay. I’m Charma and I was working with CI earlier during which we did a huge amount of research on the products where to export them and which products to be exported. So I’m very interested actually in how Pakistan and Bangladesh are coming into the picture because China one can understand it’s a very large importer but Pakistan and Bangladesh are not such large importers and while we don’t have export at all to Pakistan but to Bangladesh we are exporting quite a bit and in fact their imports are also not that large enough that we can you know export too much more the delta there will be much less. So on what basis I mean which of the factors that you have added would be the one maybe the distance which has added to the potential or how is it that countries like Germany and France which are among the largest importers are not part of the you know the overall trend. Take second question I’ll only take three. Good evening. Binay Gupta I run geocsynthesis. We are a geioeconomics advisory. Uh my question for the authors is is there any correlation or takeaway from Apple’s success in uh using India as a manufacturing exports hub uh with uh PLI that government rolled out six seven years ago and what are the implications if at all for India’s broader export strategy? Thank you. Thank you for being and last question please. Yeah. Yeah. Uh questions, one question particularly that it’s again related to the discussions on uh uh the upper sector. Now Arpita had raised a very valid point that we have to move from the labor intensive uh technologies that concept of employment in textile industry and because it is changing very fast to the capital goods industry capital intensive industry that’s true in fact I’ve traveled across this in these industries in China Vietnam Bangladesh India everywhere in a major study So what has changed in China is basically the capital intensity at this moment and for quite some time they were allowing Bangladesh to develop uh Vietnam to develop etc etc whereas they could have also done the same now the labor productivity or productivity in the industry as a whole is so high in China that they are not bothered about the uh lower rung of the apparel. They are interested in very high value apparel which they produce at abnormally low cost with intelligence, skill, capital, I mean machines, quality of machines they use, the supply chains, everything put together. They’re in a different world now. Bangladesh is definitely not way ahead of us. No way. I’ve seen the Bangladesh industry very Yeah. The point point is that our when it comes to are we thinking of a uh in industrial policy I mean export export policy for these industries which actually don’t uh neither which uh they don’t uh raise employment nor they have got any specific future strength. Are we focused on that because of the fact that they’re already in the business? Same thing with pharma. Pharma is a very importive industry. This industry most of the industries are well taken. I I think because we are running out of time. I’ll give a couple of be you to be quick Sanjay and Gun if because then I’ll give a couple of minutes each to the uh discussants. Uh so regarding the model uh it’s not saying that Bangladesh is a huge importer given where we are with Bangladesh there is this much potential left with Germany and France we are actually doing much better like that’s what the model is saying with German I think with the or a cup of tea okay okay not questioning over a cup of coffee. Okay. Sure. Sure. Sanjay, any comments? Yeah. So the point here is also it’s not just that you know uh after all the gravity model is also predicting the change in the in Pakistan and Bangladesh for example right so they’re also undertrading their their imports are much lower than their potential right uh compared again they are you know very poorly performing overall in terms of trade especially Pakistan. So had they performed to potential their imports would be much higher right and therefore that the the market would be would be much bigger. That is the that is the implication. I think that’s where Charma’s sort of conundrum is is arising from yeah the PLI question uh I think uh the if you look at what’s happened today right everybody cites this one story example of Apple and electronic sector right what happened to all the other sectors I think believe there were 13 sectors or 14 sectors right nobody talks about them so I think the the the numbers the stories speaks for itself, right? Um I I think it can obviously can we can do a exposed analysis but I I’m not sure there is too much more uh to be drawn from from that. Yeah. Thanks. Thank Thank you. Uh PG any any last point? Uh I I think I just want to add to what Sanjay said that the trade between India and Pakistan is also I want to remind people that it takes through Dubai and also India is directly exporting to Pakistan contrary to what you may believe more than a billion dollars. So trade is taking place despite what whatever barriers governments put to each other. Trade does take place between countries and also remember that in Bangladesh there are plenty of Indian investments in the textile industry also. Uh that’s all I would like to say please carry on concluding. Thanks EG. Uh in the reverse order uh a couple of comments from Dr. Sahu very briefly because we run out of time and it’s now we started 10 minutes late I think it’s fine so [laughter] 7 minutes left couple of minutes only yeah couple of minutes you know I agree with the authors that almost everybody it’s true that we should have done much better or we can do much better including the markets like China but let’s not have very knife understanding about China you see how China came up it’s like a 10 standard economics book that okay 30 years back they were there and now where are they not that easy before access to WTO the kind of input subsidy double pricing everything they did and the undervaluation of exchange rate 20 to 25% the kind of implications they could do it which we cannot do it being part of the whole system and having the economy we have I think let’s be very clear I think the point you made the kind of nonary barriers. Yes, one point we agree that it is the second largest economy or importer with $2.4 trillion market, right? We can have much more. Nobody’s denying that. But look what the what you call import of intermediate and input products. Do we have those? But if we really you know try and go go we are trying but actually it’s not like uh very easy. Uh now the point about let me not talk about China I’ll stop because I would have stopped you uh you thank you uh only my observation is second round that uh let there be a second edition for for the study uh and this is a good attempt naive attempt and um with a better model and we look forward to see and we could read it. Thank you. Uh we appreciate it. Uh see the uh the uh one area of study is that we always see India should join CPTA. Are we invited to join CPTA? What is the situation? We have to do first situation analysis then we think about joining the CPTA. Second is that we need to be overall our overall process about CPTA. Huh. No CPTP, CPTPPP sorry CPTPPP that we need to really think about whether we should but we have to be invited are we in the group whether we will be invited to do even that India needs to change its image and we need to really work to change our image that we block every big agreement at every time like you know in the multilateral to whatever so that kind of a thing should be there that we are preparing ourself to join something which mega big plurilateral or multilateral where there will be a give and take and we should be able to have that package ready. The second thing that I have in my mind and when I’m hearing all of it this China thing is very unread and very interesting. I hope that you can take a sequel down to see that which are the products where we miss the export potential in China and that would be amazing actually. I think uh just two comments uh maybe a good study on uh revealed comparative advantage at multiple digit level that I once did and I was by the way a part of India China FDA when it was being discussed it never came came to light whatever the discussion was so gone is gone uh CPTPPP point is important Arpita for the reason that uh you spoke yourself that at least let us study uh what is there to for us to do the basic research on and as I said CPTP also takes the China factor out throw and US factor out so CPTVP is a wonderful wonderful way of thinking at least even if we have we we have not done that uh since we started 6 minutes late we are completing 6 minutes late with the lavish permission which I have given to myself. Can I do 30 seconds? Yeah, definitely. I would have given you this the chance but I just wanted to say that uh it has been a wonderful discussion and uh I am reliving my trade second life once again. Uh so thank you very much to all and I want to uh thank I missed thanking Kulkerat for introducing uh I want to thank the panelists uh discussants I want to thank the authors for bringing a kind of fresh way of looking at you know I don’t go by the numbers 516 or 518 but what the paper says that there is a huge missing scope there is a and we all know that where are we standing for the last 15 years at the share of manufacturing in GDP at uh what we are exporting and why other countries are uh I have many things to say I’ll stop here and give the last chance to uh Sanjay my dear friend thank you so much Rajes for that actually wonderfully putting that uh in perspective uh I also want to add my thanks to to Prair Prabakar and Arpita for accepting our invitation again for coming uh on a on a Friday evening and uh you know and to you Rajes of course for for chairing this uh well on CPTP uh we have actually it’s been a few months we put a proposal to CE so I hope they can find us some resources uh to to do a study this is exactly a line of thinking but I want to end with one thing that Arpita said uh is is the followup of the sequel the China study all of that is fine but remember the the the point you raised about the Indian image right so it’s you know you read sometimes you know any paper in even commentary uh whether it is economist whether it’s the financial times or whether you talk individually to trade negotiators India comes out as the spoiler in the room right on terms of negotiations or in terms of moving ahead unfortunately that is that is the case so it is Part of the thing that our hesitancy to trade is reflected in the negotiations that we have and therefore this is what part of this paper is that can we let the elephant really dance. We’re not letting the elephant dance because of uh what is you know the the the spoiler in trade comes back to our own hesitancy and our own self-imposed constraints and that’s the big point that as TG also said and uh uh Rajes said and and probi said that you know we want to we put this number out what do we do with it we have offered some broad brush four lines of suggestions uh where we can go into and of course there is uh there is follow-up work work to be done but thank you again for all of you for coming on for participating uh on this Friday. So thanks to the authors but uh last but not least uh thank you very much to the audience for being with us uh till 10 minutes late. Thank you very much and special thanks to uh our organizers uh Gurumiji G Mani Gan and those who are organizing this from this side. Thank you very much. Really appreciate it. I hope I have not missed anybody but right. Thank you.