AN IMPACT ANALYSIS OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC CRISIS ON INDIAN FOREIGN TRADE

Foreign trade plays a very important role in the economy of India. India import and export large number of products and services with many countries all over the world. As it has been seen that COVID-19 pandemic has affected the global economy severely and as such global trade. So, an attempt has been made to study the impact of COVID-19 on foreign trade of India. The study is made to know the trend of India's foreign trade during and before the pandemic and also to make a comparison on the growth of foreign trade with corresponding period of the preceding year. The nature of the study is descriptive and analytical. The data have been collected from secondary sources on foreign trade from government websites and analysed with the help of graphs and tables prepared in Microsoft Excel. The study revealed that the pandemic has negative impact on India's foreign trade. Massive contraction has been seen in the export and import specially in the month of April. But during this crisis India earns surplus trade balance for the first time after liberalisation. This surplus is observed due to decline in import rather than escalation in export.