The study examines the impact of agricultural exports on India’s economic growth during 2001- 2023, using GDP as a proxy for growth. The study employs rigorous time series econometric techniques, including Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) and Phillips-Perron (PP) tests for stationarity, Johansen co-integration tests for long-run equilibrium relationships, Vector Error Correction Models (VECM) to capture short- and long-run dynamics and Granger causality tests to determine directional influence. Empirical findings reveal a significant long-run cointegrating relationship between agricultural exports and GDP. VECM results indicate that GDP strongly influences agricultural exports, while the effect of exports on GDP is not significant in the short run. Granger causality analysis confirms uni-directional causality from GDP to agricultural exports, supporting the growth-led export hypothesis. The findings provide useful insights for policy formulation, emphasizing the need to enhance production efficiency, value addition, infrastructure and market diversification to strengthen agricultural exports and support sustainable economic growth.
Bamel et al. (Wed,) studied this question.