New Delhi, Dec 24 (ANI): Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma has expressed hope that India’s exports would rebound during January-March 2010.

Talking to reporters on the sidelines of a conference here on Wednesday, Sharma said: “Well as I had said that in this quarter we will be able to arrest the decline and figures have already reflected that. In May if it was a negative growth of over 39 percent, it has come down to single digit. We hope this trend will continue, as I have said on few occasions, in the last quarter of the current fiscal. I am optimistic that Indian exports will come to the positive territory.”

Indian exports have fallen for more than a year as the global financial crisis drained demand.

The sharp fall has been arrested and the government expects year-on-year monthly figures to return to positive growth by the end of third quarter or in the fourth quarter of the current fiscal year ending March 2010.

Earlier this month Sharma said that India’s exports have stabilised and would hopefully rise in November after 13 straight months of decline.

India’s October exports fell an annual 6.6 percent to 13.19 billion dollars, while during the first seven months of the 2009/10 fiscal year ending March, they were down an annual 26 percent as the economic downturn crimped overseas demand. (ANI)