Pulses have long been an important element of India’s food and nutrition security. With 29 percent of Indians following a vegetarian diet (Gonmei and Toteja 2018), the consumption of pulses contributes to fulfilling daily protein requirements. Pulses are also significant for environmental sustainability, as they are water-efficient, require few pesticides and fertilizers, and improve soil fertility by fixing nitrogen.
For Myanmar, the export market for pulses is critical. “Dried leguminous vegetables” (DLV) are Myanmar’s second largest agricultural export; they represent 19 percent of agricultural exports, following rice at 20 percent (triennium ending [TE] 2019).2 DLV includes pulses like black and green gram, chickpea, and pigeon pea. Black and green gram account for 80 percent of Myanmar’s DLV exports, followed by chickpea and pigeon pea with 6.0 and 2.5 percent shares, respectively.
India is the largest importer of black and green gram (35 percent) and pigeon pea (95 percent) from Myanmar, and the second largest importer of chickpea (26 percent). Demand for pigeon pea is limited within Myanmar and in markets outside India. These figures refer only to formal documented trade, but a sizable portion of Myanmar’s trade is undocumented (an estimated 26 percent as of 2006), including some trade with India and China (Set Aung 2011).
Examining the determinants of supply and demand for pulses in India is critical to assessing trade patterns and policies. Several underlying factors shape India’s pulse markets:
- Despite the subpar productivity of almost all pulses, the goal of self-sufficiency is paramount in India. Even under the best case scenario, however, achieving self-sufficiency seems unlikely, as the supply-demand gap is projected to persist until 2033 (NITI Aayog 2018).
- There is little political support for relative food price increases, which have typically included pulses. India’s trade policies have been aggressive, and their stringency is positively correlated with domestic pulse production.
- Evidence shows that, although India has responded to domestic price pressures by liberalizing pulse markets, increased imports have not been sufficient to cool domestic markets (Negi and Roy 2015). Due to the moderate perishability of pulses, buffer stocks procured and stored by the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED) could stem price increases, but the amount of stock would have to be larger (at least 1 million metric tons).
- When trade policies are subject to change, exporters to India are unable to make immediate supply adjustments, which is particularly important for Myanmar, given its high dependence on the Indian market.
This policy brief highlights the linkages between pulse consumption, production, and trade policies and their implications for Myanmar’s trade with India. The authors also assess how Myanmar could diversify its pulse exports through trade with other countries and investigate the potential to mitigate risks through a government-to-government (G2G) advance purchase agreement with India. This proposed agreement was discussed but ultimately rejected during a period of a pulse scarcity in India. Recent price increases due to the COVID-19 pandemic have now rekindled India’s interest in this arrangement.
You can view the full policy brief in English here.
INDIA’S TRADE IN PULSES AND THE PROPOSED TRADE AGREEMENT WITH MYANMAR
Existing pulse trade and diversification opportunities
To assess Myanmar’s trade in pulses with India, we use highly disaggregated customs data at the 8-digit harmonized system level at a monthly frequency. Myanmar’s share of Indian pulse imports fell from 34 percent in TE2002 to 14 percent in TE2019. Over the last five years, Myanmar’s export of black and green gram experienced a steep decline as the number of countries exporting these pulses to India expanded (Figure 4). Growing competition from countries including Australia, Mozambique, Russia, and Tanzania may have contributed to the decline in Myanmar’s share (Ajmani et al. 2018). Increased production in India, trade restrictions including QRs, and policy uncertainty may have further exacerbated this decline.
India’s imports (in metric tons) of black and green gram (left panel), and number of countries exporting black and green gram to India (right panel)
Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge and thank the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) for its financial support. This study is a part of the IFAD project Agricultural Transformation and Market Integration (ATMI) in ASEAN countries: Responding to Food Security and Inclusiveness Concerns. The authors are grateful for the critical comments and suggestions received from Dr. Avinash Kishore and Dr. P.K. Joshi. The opinions expressed here belong to the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of IFAD or the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).