India’s Trade in Medical Devices—Technological Composition, Revealed Comparative Advantage and Intra-industry Trade

This article discusses India’s trade in medical devices from 2003 to 2021. Given the product heterogeneity of medical devices, this article follows a technological ranking of medical devices based on a risk-based product classification. Using international trade data at the harmonised system six-digit level, it develops a regional intensity index to understand the direction of India’s exports and imports. It uses the revealed comparative advantage index to understand the competitiveness of exports from India and segregates total trade into one-way and two-way trade. Using the product quality vertical index, the article separates two-way trade in products of similar quality from two-way trade in products of differentiated goods, that is, horizontal and vertical intra-industry trade, respectively ( HIIT and VIIT ). It finds that, between 2003 and 2021, India’s imports became more biased towards medium-to-high technology products, while, in exports, low-technology products became more prominent. Quality analysis suggests that India traded in products of similar quality for medium-to-high technology products, while it was a net quality exporter for low-technology items. Furthermore, between 2003 and 2021, India could not retain competitiveness in exports of products for which it had HIIT or VIIT ^H , suggesting that Indian exports did not catch up in terms of quality.

JEL Codes: F02, F13, F10, L69