authors
Balbir Singh

abstract
The present study analyses the export competitiveness of Indian horticulture. For assessing the export competitiveness of Indian Horticulture, standard tools namely Nominal Protection Coefficient (NPC) and Export Performance Ratio (EPR) in the light of both exportable and importable hypothesis were worked out. India has comparative advantage in producing a large number of agricultural commodities due to lower resource costs. The export performance is better for commercial crops like tea and coffee etc. These are the commodities produce that commercial scale and have been our traditional exports. The country has also advantage in producing labour intensive crops. For majority of the horticultural crops except onions the EPR's are insignificant and fluctuating. High (>1), but stagnant EPR's for onions, tea and pimento indicate saturation point in the export of these commodities. India has been a traditional exporter of these commodities, but exports have plateaued in the recent years. The study also indicates a significant amount of inefficiency in the post harvest operations of the commodities. The reasons are: poor infrastructure and government restrictions in the domestic market. Trade in agriculture commodities have been of great importance to India. It constituted 10.23% of total exports in 2008-09 and the share of agricultural allied sector in the Indian economy GDP was 15.7% in 2008-09.