Abstract:
In recent decades, India has emerged as a major economy in the world.
Although Sri Lanka is situated in close proximity to India and has
entered into trade agreements with India to boost its international
trade, it has still not been able to achieve the expected level of growth
in exports to India. Based on the 2019 United Nations COMTRAD data,
India is the third largest export destination of Sri Lanka, and the export
revenue from trade with India amounted to US $ 759 million in 2019.
However, the statistics in the past years indicate a drop in Sri Lankan
export revenue to India from $ 767 million in 2018 to $ 759 million in
2019. In spite of different bilateral and multilateral trade agreements
entered into between the two countries, Sri Lankan export
performance still remains unsatisfactory. This indicates that apart
from tariff reductions, certain other non-tariff barriers influence
international trade performance between the two countries.
Therefore, this study aims to explore barriers to Sri Lankan exporters
which undermine their international trade performance in the Indian
market. The study follows a qualitative research methodology and has
collected data using face-to-face unstructured interviews with twenty
(20) respondents representing different stakeholders engaged in the
process of exporting from Sri Lanka to India. The collected data was
coded and analyzed through template analysis. Findings revealed
thirty-five (35) important factors which influence successful
penetration into and performance in the Indian market. The results
reveal that host market and home market characteristics have a
greater impact on successful performance in the Indian market than
product or firm characteristics.
