India's trade deficit during Apl-Dec at $ 42,000mln

New Delhi, Jan 27 (UNI) The country's trade deficit for April-December, 2006 increased to 41,723.38 million dollars, which was higher than the deficit of 30,595.5 million dollars during the same period in 2005.

The cumulative value of the country's merchandise exports in the first nine months of the current financial year 2006-07 was 89 billion dollars as against 65,668.36 million dollars during 2005-06, indicating a growth of 36 per cent over the same period last year.

According to the provisional data available from Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCI&S) exports during the month of December were valued at 9,902.03 million dollars as compared to 8,283.70 million dollars in the same period last year.

Cumulative value of imports during April-December, 2006 was 1,31,212.46 million dollars, which was higher than imports at 96263.95 million dollars during the same period in 2005.

Similarly Crude Oil imports were valued at 4,817.29 million dollars in December 2006 as compared to 3,717.48 million dollars in the corresponding period last year thus registering a growth of 29.58 per cent.

Crude Oil imports during April-December 2006 were valued at 43,816.61 million dollars, which was 39.23 per cent higher than 31,470.99 million dollars in the corresponding period last year.

Non-oil imports during the same period were valued at 87,395.85 million dollars which was 18.67 per cent higher than the level of such imports valued at 73,647.68 million dollars in April-December, 2005.

UNI