The writing on the wall is gradually becoming clearer. India's service sector prowess is already under challenge, and will be entirely overshadowed unless our policymakers wake up from their current complacent slumber, and pretty quickly at that.
A tiny sliver of hope comes from the fact that the Economic Survey of India this year finally reported what was a known fact for the past five years - that India is rapidly losing ground to China when it comes to global exports of commercial services.
Data from the World Trade Organisation indicate that although software and IT services exports have so far continued to be steady and India's share of global service exports rose to 4.4 per cent in 2010, China overtook India in the second half of the last decade and now accounts for 6.1 per cent of global commercial service exports (excluding intra-European Union).
It is true that the composition of service export baskets of the two countries is vastly different. India largely specialises in business service exports (reflected in the high share of "other commercial services" in total service trade).
Chinese exports are focused more on transport and travel services, the two together accounting for nearly 50 per cent of China's commercial service exports in 2010 compared to less than a quarter for India.
It is also possible that China's net importer status has encouraged analysts and politicians to gloss over the consistent growth in its service trade performance.
However, that state of affairs may change soon, as a closer look at the composition of trade data suggests.
China's exports of commercial services expanded by 32 per cent, nipping at the heels of India's 33 per cent expansion in 2010 (the countries were ranked 3rd and 5th respectively in the list of leading exporters of commercial services).
India's cause for concern, however, emanates from the fact that while China has been a net importer of services, for a few years now it has been a net exporter of "other commercial services".
In 2010, China's net surplus of "other commercial services" trade was $16.19 billion, a little less than half of India's surplus of $36.78 billion, presumably supported by the impressive growth in the infrastructure and trade-related services.
Comparing the change in shares of exports and imports in other commercial services further supports my case. Between 2005 and 2010, the growth in China's other commercial exports to the world averaged 25 per cent to the 18 per cent growth in its other commercial imports.
The corresponding export and import shares for India are a mirror opposite at 20 and 24 per cent respectively. The picture becomes a little more stark if we take the 2010 data; the growth rates of other commercial services exports and imports in China was 38 and nine per cent, compared to India's 36 and 66
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