Winning Business Desk

Mumbai. Relations between India and China have been strained for a long time due to the military standoff in eastern Ladakh. But despite this agonising fact, bilateral trade between the two countries grew by 15.3% to cross $31 billion in the January-March quarter. China's exports to India are $27.1 billion and imports are only $4.87 billion. In such a situation, the trade deficit increased to $ 22.23 billion. Chinese Customs has released this data. Last year, India-China trade reached a record high of over $125 billion. In that year, China's exports to India increased by 46.2% to $97.52 billion, while India's exports to China increased by 34.2% to $28.14 billion. The trade deficit stood at $69.38.

What China says

Liu Zhongyi, secretary of the China-South Asia Cooperation Research Center, said on increasing trade between the two countries, "The steady increase in bilateral trade shows the complementarity of the two major developing economies despite global geopolitical tensions." He said that apart from electronic components like mobile phones, about 70% of the chemicals and other manufacturing goods used in the Indian pharmaceutical industry are imported from China.

China reduced imports from India

India's exports to China declined by 26.1% year-on-year, compared to 28.3% year-on-year growth in India's imports from China in the first three months. Explaining the reason, Liu said that in the first quarter of 2021, China imported iron ore in large quantities from India. However, from the second quarter of last year, China reduced imports from India.

Standoff at border continues

Despite the two-year-old border standoff between the armies of India and China in eastern Ladakh, trade is growing steadily. Overall, China's foreign trade maintained its growth trajectory in the first quarter of 2022. China's foreign trade grew 13% year-on-year to $1.48 trillion. China's exports to the US grew 16.7% year-on-year to $138 billion in the January-March quarter.