Foreign trade of India

Foreign trade in India includes all imports and exports to and from India. At the level of Central Government it is administered by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. Foreign trade accounted for 48.8% of India's GDP in 2018.

Quotes

• It is clear however that the products of India which entered long-distance trade were of a great, seemingly infinite, variety and that they were quite commonly expensive or precious. The trade between India and the Greco-Roman world was especially a trade in pepper, of which Malabar was the source. This trade retained its importance, as we can see from the growth of ex­patriate trade communities of Muslims, Jews and Christians on the coast. Furthermore, there were ‘spices’, including many kinds of oint­ments, medicinal substances, poisons, antidotes, perfumes, incense, such as costum, ginger, aloe-wood, nard (spikenard), ambergris, wil­low, camphor, myrobalans, cloves, nutmeg, sandalwood, musk, cinna­mon, cardamom, mace, and rhinoceros horn (a panacea and aphrodisiac).
  • Wink A, Al-Hind, The Making of the Indo-Islamic World. Volume 1,60

• A major ex­port from India, especially Gujarat and Bengal, were textiles, such as silk, brocade, cotton, and jute.52 India’s supremacy on the textile markets was based on her early mastery of the technique of fast dying from natural sources. Of great importance were also Indian steel and metallurgical products like swords. ‘The Indians are very good at mak­ing various compounds of mixtures of substances with the help of which they melt the malleable iron; it then turns into Indian iron, and is called after al-Hind. There, in al-Hind, are workshops where swords are manufactured, and their craftsmen make excellent ones surpassing those made by other peoples. In the same way, the Sindl, Sarandlbl and the Baynimani iron vie with one another for superiority as regards the climate of the place, skill in industry, the method of melting and stamp­ ing and beauty in polishing and scouring. But no iron is comparable to the Indian one in sharpness’.53 Indian iron products were for example exported to East Africa, while at the same time Sofala had the best and largest iron mines which produced largely for the Indian metallurgical industry.
  • Wink A, Al-Hind, The Making of the Indo-Islamic World. Volume 1,60ff