Growth rate of india’s trade in textile and clothing with saarc countries from 1972 to 2011

The objectives of this paper is study the Growth Rate of India’s Trade in Textile and Clothing with SAARC Countries from 1972 to 2011. Regional Trade Agreements have become increasingly prevalent since the early 1990s. India’s relations with SAARC countries are entrenched deeply. In addition to an overlapped cultural and religious heritage, the SAARC countries share a common vision on many regional and international affairs. Textile and clothing sector plays a major role in SAARC region for promoting regional trade; it is a major source of foreign exchange and largest industrial sector of SAARC region and contributes towards employment of skilled and unskilled labor in the region. The contribution of textile and clothing towards the GDP and international trade of SAARC countries is very high, and therefore, any problem in the textile and clothing sectors has macroeconomic national implications. In our study we found that the growth rate of India’s exports of textile and clothing items started improving after the establishment of SAARC in 1985, experienced high growth since 2002 after the implementation of SAPTA as well as many bilateral agreements between India and other SAARC nations. This increase, however, was not uniform for all the nations and the exports to Maldives and up to some extent Bhutan had lower growth compared to other nations. On the other hand, exports of textile and clothing to Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan experienced high growth,