Some Implications of Indian forest-based Export Trends

Studies of price and quantity movements of internationally traded commodities are highly sensitive to the choice of the time period Yet, the long-term trends displayed by those movements are quite capable of yielding information valuable for short to medium-term export policy formulation. Attempts are therefore, made in this paper to ascertain the directions, relative magnitudes, and policy implication of the secular shifts of the demand and supply curves of fourteen selected Indian forest-based exports, as implied by their observed unit value/price and trade volume growth trends.The results reveal that the outward rates of secular shift i of the demand and supply curves of printing and writing paper are probably the highest, and those of paliwood logs, with their inward shifts the lowest among the exports studied Though undue importence cannot, it is acknowledged, he attached to the numerical magnitudes of the estimates made, their ranges and relative rankings do provide the basis for several conclusions. A diagrammatic exposition, provided in the appendix, further clarifies some of the observations