Growth and Instability of International Trade of Jute in India

Abstract

India is the largest producer of jute in the world. Among the important jute producing countries in the world, India had gained the first position in 2020 by producing about 1807 thousand tonnes of jute on an area of 691 thousand hectares and contributing a share of 67.21 and 49.47 per cent to the world’s total production and area of jute, respectively. In the present study efforts have been made to examine the growth performance of international trade of jute in India. The study was based on secondary data for the period of 30 years (1989-90 to 2018-19).  The collected data were sub-divided into three periods, and the exponential growth function was used to anlysed the growth rates of jute. The instability in area, production, productivity, export and import were measured by Coppock’s Instability Index (CII) and Cuddy Della Valle’s Instability Index (CDVI). The results of growth rate showed negative trend in area of jute but production and productivity showed positive growth rates over the study period.  All the parameters viz., export quantity, export value, export unit price, import quantity, import value and import unit price shown positive growth rates during overall period and found to be significant at 1 per cent level of significance. It was concluded that, India has been associated with moderate degree of variability in the jute production and productivity in the first sub period and this variability has been reduced significantly during the second and third period, while area recorded less variability during the study period. All the parameters viz., export quantity, export value, import quantity and import value have experienced high instability while the export unit price and import unit price registered stability during the study period.