Book Description

India, the second largest producer of fruit and vegetable in the world, exports fresh fruits and vegetables, processed fruits and vegetables, animal products, other processed foods and cereals worth of US$ 5.45 billion as on November 2010-2011 to different parts of the world. In the world exports of processed fruits/vegetable (in terms of value) India stood at US$ 1.59 billion in 2008. These raw fruits and vegetables are usually processed in other economies and become a source of revenue for those economies. In spite of being a major producer of fruits & vegetables India has not been exporting much of processed food made out of these items. The change in the income growth, increase in population, lifestyle and concern towards health and nutrition worldwide have resulted in a large demand for processed fruit and vegetable products all over the globe. India being a large producer of fruits and vegetables it apparently looks quite prospective to be able to supply this large demand for the processed food. This will not only fetch revenue by the way of increased exports from India but will also serve to control the large wastage of fruits and vegetables that takes place in the country. From locational point of view, India is better placed to export fruits and vegetable to Gulf countries which also happens to be a large market for these products. As such India has been exporting raw fruits and vegetables to majority of all gulf countries but processed fruits and vegetable products which are also in high demand in the Gulf countries have been majorly absent from India's export basket to these countries. Against this backdrop, the present study seeks to identify the list of potential processed fruits and vegetable products in which India is expected to gain from increased exports to Gulf countries. In other words, the study will try to prepare India's aggressive position with respect to processed fruit & vegetable products in the Gulf market. The research methodology used is CGE modeling analysis. The implication of this increase in export on India's trade variables & impact on the economy's fruit and vegetable sector in particular will be analyzed. Subsequently, the paper also tries to explore the various challenges with respect to marketing these products in the destination countries.