New Delhi, Sep 2 (IANS): The share of engineering exports share in India's overall merchandise export basket increased in July.

According to engineering exporters body EEPC India, engineering exports increased their share to 27.12 per cent in the overall merchandise export basket in July, with a marked improvement over 22.33 per cent in April.

The EEPC India analysis showed that April had witnessed the biggest contraction in overall exports by 60.28 per cent, while engineering exports suffered deeper cuts of over 64 per cent.

"Month-on-month situations have steadily improved since then with significant turnaround for the engineering sector," EEPC India said in a statement.

"As against 10.21 per cent drop in India's overall merchandise exports in July 2020 to $23.64 billion from $26.33 billion in July 2019, engineering exports, in a noticeable development, returned to growth path with a 9.08 per cent year on year increase."

Engineering exports, according to the latest monthly available data for July this fiscal, stood at $6.41 billion as against $5.87 billion in the same month of 2019, the statement said.

"During July 2020, the 9 per cent year-on-year growth of engineering exports was basically driven by higher exports of iron and steel, most of the other non-ferrous metal and metal products, ships, boats and floating structures, electric machinery and equipment," Mahesh Desai, Chairman of the EEPC India, was quoted as saying in the statement.

However, Desai cautioned that one month positive may go either way, given a highly fluid situation the global trade finds itself in.