Export Performance of Eggs from India: An Economic Perspective

Abstract

Bird eggs are common food and poultry eggs are the most popular choice across the globe. They are inexpensive source of nutrition. The present study was framed to study the export performance of eggs from India. The statistical tools like growth rate, instability and Cobb-Douglas Production Function were used in the study. Time series data for the last 20 years i.e. 1996-97 to 2015-16 pertaining to production and export collected from FAO STAT were used in the analysis. The entire period was divided into two sub-periods i.e. period-I (1996-97 to 2005-06), period-II (2006-07 to 2015-16) to see the periodic affects. The results revealed that, the growth rates of production of eggs were computed to be positive and significant during all the periods under investigation. It was further observed that during period-II, the growth rates of export quantity and export value of eggs were obtained significantly negative, while the growth rate of unit value of export of eggs was found positive and non-significant. This may be due to the outbreaks of bird flu in 2008 leading to ban on importing poultry products from India. Overall the production of eggs was assessed more or less stable. But, export quantity, export value and unit value of export showed larger instability. Egg export was observed to be positively and significantly influenced by export price, India’s share in world production, while it was negatively and significantly influenced by exchange rate. India lacks access to developed country markets due to stringent food safety and quality standards. Therefore to capture higher share of world trade, sanitary measures, standardization of packaging, grading, infrastructure and irradiation facilities and simplification in export procedures may be emphasized to increase eggs export and fetch foreign exchange.