Product Profile: Sweet biscuits

The word biscuit is derived from an old French word ‘bescuit’ which means “twice-cooked”.  This is because biscuits were originally cooked in a twofold process: first baked, and then dried out in a slow oven. The popularity of biscuit may be attributed to its characteristics such as nutritious, easy-to-store, easy-to-carry, and long-lasting. It is primarily used as a snack.

For India, Sweet Biscuit is an important commodity owing to its large demand in primarily European and American market which India  so far has not been  able to tap despite availability of adequate raw materials such as wheat and sugar. Its significance is also driven by the push for value added commodity export.

World Trade:

Sweet biscuit’s total trade worth is over US$ 16 billion in 2017. Global exports of Sweet biscuit in 2017 was valued at US$ 7.9 billion with Germany leading the list and its total import is valued at US$ 7.9 billion with USA leading the list.

 

India exported US$ 169.5 million in 2017 primarily to USA and African nations such as Angola. India imported sweet biscuits of worth US$ 6.1 million in 2017 Primarily from ASEAN countries.

Using various indicators such as untapped market value, Trade complementarity index and trade openness index the potential markets derived for India for exporting sweet biscuits are the following.

 

A brief overview of ad valorem tariff in the potential markets show that this product does not entail very high tariff. Tariff structure across the potential markets is as follows.

 

Sweet Biscuits are very high potential product for India based on India’s trade balance and RCA. India is competitive to export the same.