Due to a sharp drop in crude oil prices to USD 76 per barrel from a peak of USD 147 per barrel last year, the country's imports fell by a drastic 31.3 per cent in September this year to USD 21.3 billion.

As a result, the country's trade gap narrowed to USD 7.7 billion against USD 15.3 billion in the same month in 2008, according to official data released on Tuesday.

For the April-August period of the current fiscal, the overseas shipments dropped by 28.5 per cent to USD 77.9 billion from USD 108.9 billion in the same period last year.

However, the fall in September shrank by about six per cent as compared with 19.4 per cent in August.

The exports for 2008-09 now stands revised to USD 185 billion.