India’s trade has not been left unbothered by the political,and economical crisis in Sri Lanka, as exports have been clearly affected.
The island country is a great destination for agri commodities like grapes, sugar and onions.
India has always been a large exporter to Sri Lanka. It had provided the latter with products such as engineering goods, skimmed milk powder, sugar, onions, and grapes. With the easy access to the other country’s borders through water, Indian exporters often chose to deliver their consignments through sea.The bill of such consignments, for the year 2021-22 had been a solid $5,208.3 million, a 65% year on year growth.
The export scenario won’t stay the same for this year as most exporters have put a hold on the trade, since the economic crisis took momentum. Few of the traders have complained that their payment is stuck, and overdue.
Sugar has been a major part of the exports. Sri Lanka consumes 40,000-50,000 tonnes of sugar every month, out of which ninety percent is exported from India.
But, this has not been the case recently. The exports to Sri Lanka have been stopped since the economic crisis started. It was also remarked by Rahil Sheikh, managing director of MEIR commodities, that as of now, hardly any surplus sugar is left to be exported.
Sugar is not the only commodity whose exports have been stopped, onions which were a large chunk of the financial year 2021-22’s exports (1.62 lakh tonnes ) have also stopped going to Sri Lanka.
