Export Performance of Indian Cashew: An Overview

The present study was undertaken to analyse the export competitiveness and trade direction of Indian cashewnut. India is the major importer of raw cashewnut in the world, and import of raw cashewnut increased steadily. The Indian Cashew industry provides employment to more than 5 lakh people both directly and indirectly, particularly in the rural areas and it thus plays a very vital role in the economy. Today nuts constitute an important part of diet in several countries of the world. In Indian cashew processing factories, over 95 per cent of the workers are women. The total export earnings from export of cashew kernel and cashew nut shell liquid has increased from Rs.447.80 crores in 1990-91 to Rs.3890.25 crores in 2019-20. The global demand for cashew has been on the increasing trend over the years. Indian cashew is very popular in the world market for the table purpose, due to its delicious, pleasant taste and nutritive value. India is facing tough competition from Vietnam and Brazil in the exports of Cashew Kernels. The exportable hypothesis's NPC for the year 2020 was 0.96, indicating that farmers received lower domestic prices than international prices. This suggests that domestic producers were subject to disincentives or taxes in comparison to a free trade environment. Saudi Arabia was one of the most stable countries among major importers of Indian cashew kernel as indicated by the high retention probability of 72.68 per cent, Japan was having probability retention of 12.01 per cent indicating that it was unstable importer of Indian cashew kernel. The major competitors for India in the world market are Vietnam, Brazil, Indonesia and Tanzania. A dependency on one or two export market would increase the trade risk in the near future. Hence, appropriate export promotion strategies are to be evolved to diversify the geographical concentration. The results of NPC revealed that the domestic prices received by the farmers were found to be lower than the international prices.