Diplomatic tensions between New Delhi and Ottawa continued to escalate on Thursday (September 21), with India stopping visa services in Canada and Canada “adjusting its staff presence in India”.

Amid the ongoing standoff, we take a look at India and Canada’s trade ties.

India-Canada trade
India’s total trade with Canada in the last (2022-23) financial year was $8 billion — that’s 0.7% of India’s total trade ($1.1 trillion) with the world. The share has remained this way at least for the past five years, even though the export and import numbers have gone up and down, especially during the Covid year.

Bilateral trade has also been fairly evenly balanced; in 2022-23, for instance, roughly $4 bn of imports were matched by $4 billion of exports even though India enjoyed a tiny trade surplus of $58 million.

1. Mineral fuels, mineral oils and products of their distillation; bituminous substances; mineral waxes.
2. Pulp of wood or of other fibrous cellulosic material; waste and scrap of paper or paperboard
3. Edible vegetables and certain roots and tubers

The top three exports, on the other hand, accounted for only 30% of the total exports. These were:

1. Pharmaceutical products
2. Articles of iron or steel
3. Nuclear reactors, boilers, machinery and mechanical appliances; parts thereof

The major agri imports from Canada
Canada is important to India as a supplier of two major agri-related commodities.

The first is muriate of potash (MOP), the third most consumed fertilizer in India after urea and di-ammonium phosphate. India’s MOP imports totalled 50.94 lakh tonnes (lt) in 2020-21, 29.06 lt in 2021-22 and 23.59 lt in 2022-23, valued at $1,212.67 million, $990.84 million and $1,405.31 million respectively. Canada’s share in these was 16.12 lt ($383.91 million) in 2020-21, 6.15 lt ($185.13 million) in 2021-22 and 11.43 lt ($680.40 million) in 2022-23. Canada was India’s largest MOP supplier last year, followed by Israel, Jordan, Belarus, Turkmenistan and Russia.

Source : https://indianexpress.com/