New Delhi - NITI Aayog released the third edition of the report titled ‘Export Preparedness Index (EPI) 2022’ for States/UTs of India. The report was released by Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog, Shri. Suman Bery.

Throughout the post-pandemic era, Indian exports have proven their resilience by successfully navigating the challenges thrown up by the post pandemic supply-chain issues and geopolitical factors. To maintain this momentum, India aims to become a global export player by promoting States and further districts as export hubs. The EPI 2022 recognizes that by unlocking regional competitiveness and leveraging our innate diversity, India can enhance its export potential. The Export Preparedness Index by NITI Aayog in association with the Institute for Competitiveness, delves deeper beyond states and examines exports at the district level.

The EPI 2022 report seeks to empower State governments with region-specific insights to assist decision-making, identify strengths, address weaknesses, and foster comprehensive growth across States and UTs of India.

The comparative analysis of export preparedness among States and UTs introduces a framework that fosters competitiveness within the country. This index empowers stakeholders to identify strategies and improve parameters that impact a state's exports, thereby enhancing its export competitiveness. It provides a comprehensive analysis for policy changes and the creation of a favourable export ecosystem using its data-driven approach. Consequently, this edition can serve as a catalyst for competitive federalism, elevating the export performance of every state and contributing to the nation's overall development. It is important to note that each iteration of EPI has its own methodology and therefore does not offer itself to comparison across editions due to evolving factors.

The report presents a comprehensive analysis of India’s export performance in FY22, along with its sector-specific and district-level merchandise export trends. The EPI 2022 Report evaluates the performance of the states across four pillars – Policy, Business Ecosystem, Export Ecosystem, and Export Performance. The index uses 56 indicators which holistically capture the export preparedness of States and UTs in terms of exports at both the state and district-level.

The overview of the four pillars in the index is –

• Policy Pillar evaluates states and UTs’ performance based on its adoption of export-related policy ecosystem at a state and district level as well as the institutional framework surrounding the ecosystem.
• Business Ecosystem assesses the prevailing business environment in a state/UT, along with the extent of business-supportive infrastructure, and a state/UTs’ transport connectivity.
• Export Ecosystem focuses on the export-related infrastructure in a state along with the trade support provided to the exporters, and the prevalence of Research and Development in the state to foster innovation.
• Export Performance is an output-based indicator which gauges the growth of a state’s export over the previous year and analyses its export concentration and footprint on the global markets.

These pillars are further based on ten sub-pillars – Export Promotion Policy; Institutional Framework; Business Environment; Infrastructure; Transport Connectivity; Export Infrastructure; Trade Support; R&D Infrastructure; Export Diversification; and Growth Orientation.

The EPI 2022 Report observed that most ‘Coastal States’ have performed well, with the states of Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Gujarat being the top-performers in the Export Preparedness Index across the country, in all categories of states.

EPI 2022 Overall Rankings