US-China trade war: SBI report says India benefited modestly

India has benefited from the US-China trade war by exporting more items to China, a State Bank of India (SBI) Ecowrap report said on Monday. According to the report, India`s exports to China post the trade war, have grown much faster than that to the US. While overall exports to the US grew 9.46 per cent to $52.4 billion in 2018-19, for China the growth was 25.6 per cent to $16.7 billion.

"Looking at the products on which China and USA have imposed tariffs on each other, India has made modest gains in capturing such market," the report said. The textile imports, particularly, of the US has shifted from China towards other countries in South Asia.

As per the US Department of Commerce Office of Textiles and Apparel (OTEXA) data, though India has gained in the first five months of 2019, Vietnam and Bangladesh have witnessed much larger increase in exports to US.

Instead, cotton imports from the US to China declined for the first half 2019 compared to the same peropd of the previous year, while imports from other countries, including Brazil, Australia and India have increased.

"Thus India has benefited from US-China trade war by exporting more to China like plastic, cotton, inorganic chemicals and fish," the report said.

"Interestingly, India has a revealed comparative advantage in some of these commodities." The report pointed out that to further boost exports, easy availability of credit is of "paramount importance".

"Certain measures including extension of `Interest Equalization Scheme` to all categories of exporters and end to end digitization of the export process among others should aid our export credit growth," the report added.