Global economic slowdown may play spoil the party for Indian exports, that have begun to regain competitiveness in the international market owing to a fall in rupee value against the dollar, global rating agency Moody's has said. "Considering that the rupee has recently retreated, the price competitiveness of Indian exports will stop declining. The biggest risk to India's export outlook is now purely weakness in external demand," a Moody's report on India's foreign trade said on Tuesday. Moody's report comes a day after official data showed Indian exports clocking an impressive 31.5 per cent growth in the first month of the current fiscal to 14.4 billion dollars. The report said slackening consumption in developed nations, particularly in the US, which is the biggest export market for India, would hurt the Asian nation's outbound shipments. "India will have to explore intraregional trade opportunities in order to sustain export revenues," it said. Pointing out that the export data ‘is a little surprising’, the international agency said, "The country's export growth is showing absolutely no signs of a slowdown, despite earlier complaints by exporters about the negative impact of a stronger currency," it said. It further said the country's import growth has remained ‘robust’ notwithstanding the ‘steady doses of monetary tightening by the central bank’. Fuelled by a 46 per cent growth in oil imports, India's total imports were valued at 24.27 billion dollars during April in 2008. The high import bill resulted in a trade deficit of 9.9 billion dollars, in line with Moodys' projections of 8.9 billion dollar. The rupee is currently trading at around 42.2 to a dollar depreciating from the 39 level at the start of 2008.
