The Wire Staff 
New Delhi: According to provisional data from the commerce ministry, India’s exports to China dipped by about 28% to $15.32 billion in 2022-23, while imports rose by 4.16% to $98.51 billion in the last fiscal. The trade gap widened to a record high of $83.2 billion in FY23 as against $72.91 billion in 2021-22.
Due to plummeting exports, India’s bilateral trade with China showed a minor dip of about 1.5% to $113.83 billion as against $115.42 billion in 2021-22. This meant that the US emerged as India’s biggest trading partner in FY23 with a bilateral trade of $128.55 billion, as per the provisional data.
However, there has been a major disparity in the trade figures put out by India and China. Mint reported that while China claimed that trade with India touched $103 billion in the first nine months of 2022, India’s data showed that bilateral trade with China was only $91 billion.
In FY22, while Beijing claimed it was India’s largest trading partner, Delhi countered it by saying that the US was its largest trading partner, followed by China.
As per the newspaper, trade experts claimed that the significant mismatch is most likely because of the under-invoicing of shipments by Indian importers to avoid paying import taxes. Under-invoicing of imports involves marking the stated value of imports below the actual value paid to the exporter abroad, reducing the import tax outgo.
India’s imports from a partner country cannot be equal to a partner country’s exports to India as export values of products generally reflect the market value or free on board (FoB), whereas imports include cost, insurance, and freight (CIF), meaning the import value should be higher. However, it is the opposite in the case of China-India bilateral trade, as per Mint.
Therefore, while the gap of $2 billion in India’s exports to China and its imports could be explained by this, $10 billion lower imports by India compared to China’s exports to India cannot be explained by this, said the newspaper.