'If West Asia crisis continues Indian exports to other parts of world will get impacted': Official

Hyderabad: If the West Asia conflict continues, India's exports to other parts of the world will also be impacted, Central Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agrawal said on Saturday.

Indian exports during the last financial year were expected to remain on a positive trajectory despite the crisis, he added.

Addressing a press conference on the sidelines of 'Chintan Shivir - Scaling Up Pharma Exports', Agrawal said that because of the West Asia crisis, there was definitely an impact last month on both imports and exports, as energy is a major part of the Indian import market.

"West Asia is also an important market. Around 12-13 per cent of our exports go to the region. So, that will directly get impacted. And if it goes on for long, maybe our exports to other parts of the world will also get impacted as some of the value chains will rotate back. We are cognizant of it,” the official told reporters.

Replying to a query, he said the exact impact of the West Asia crisis on Indian exports will be known in a couple of weeks.

He said the Centre is trying to see that the supply chains get minimum impact as far as possible, even as the government is ready with some numbers going down, as far as export and import are concerned.

"And I assume, it will not only be a one-way traffic, in terms of export going down, but it will also be imports having some downfall," he said.

He further said that even if the war ends, the impact of the crisis will be there for the next few months or years, depending on which supply chain or which infrastructure has been impacted.

"So, at this juncture, it will be very difficult to take a very long-term view on it," the official said.

The idea was that the industry should become self-reliant to combat these external challenges, which may keep coming, he opined.

Agrawal said that there has been some impact coming to pharma sector in terms of some of the important intermediates and solvents as the supply chain is getting impacted.

All arms of the government are engaged to see how they can prioritise the limited supply of LPG, and it is being resolved to the largest extent possible by even diversifying imports, buying from other sources also, he said.

"So, as we are able to resolve that overall supply, we will try to alleviate some of the pain in every sector. The Pharma sector will be one of the priority sectors," he said.

The commerce secretary said that the industry and the government are sitting and trying to figure out what can be done to make the supply chains more resilient.