Trade deficit during the month, however, shrunk to $523.76 million compared with $876.80 million in 1998 as imports came down sharply by 8.66 per cent indicating the continuing slump in domestic demand.

In value terms, exports increased to $2,632.02 million from $2,578.17 million, while imports dropped from $3,454.98 million to $ 3,155.78 million.

Oil imports valued at $580.54 million were 20.88 per cent higher than those at $480.27 million in April 1998. Non-oil imports however dropped by 13.43 per cent to $2575.24 million from $2974.71 million.

Exports began to show a positive growth of 3.81 per cent from November 1998, reversing the negative growth in the preceding months of 1998-99 fiscal.

In the following month, that is December 1998, the positive growth recorded was 7.73 per cent, which shot up to 8.59 per cent in January 1999. It, however, dropped to 4.36 per cent inFebruary and thereafter rose again to 10.07 per cent in March 1999.

The commerce ministry is in the midst of an exercise to finalise the export target for 1999-2000 by holding discussions with all the export promotion councils.

These discussions to be initiated by commerce minister Ramakrishna Hegde with the councils from April 13 was stalled, following the defeat of the BJP-led coalition government on April 17.

Notifying the revised exim policy on March 31, Hegde had refrained from fixing a target for the current fiscal on grounds that the export projections made by his ministry for 1998-99 had fallen far short of the target.

The growth rate came to only 3.7 per cent against a 20 per cent increase in dollar in terms in export growth visualised by the ministry. During the Eighth Plan, exports registered a growth of over 18-21 pr ent in dollar terms only during 1993-94 , 1994-95 and 1995-96.In the remaining two years, the growth was a measly 3.8 per cent in 1992-93 and 4.01 per cent in 1996-97.

Theexport growth rate decelerated by 1.5 per cent in 1991-92, while imports declined due to import compression measures initiated by the Congress government immediately after the reforms. The export growth recorded in the first year of the Ninth Plan (1997-98) was by far the lowest.

India's trade deficit at $3.34 billion in 1992-93 dropped to $1.06 billion in 1993-94 but increased to $2.02 billion in 1994-95, $4.53 billion in 1995-96, $5.44 billion in 1996-97, $ 6.79 billion in 1997-98 and $ 8.24 billion in 1998-99.