Beyond the gateway: West Bengal has the products, but needs an export strategy
West Bengal has the ports, the borders and the products, yet its goods exports in 2025-26 were below their 2021-22 level in dollar terms. The next export policy must focus on organizing and upgrading the capabilities the state already has.
On 22 June, state finance minister Swapan Dasgupta presented the new government’s first budget, with ₹5,000 crore for industry incentives. The timing matters for exports, because the 2023 policy aimed to double within a decade, yet Bengal exported $12.88 billion in 2025-26, still below the $13.9 billion of 2021-22.
Bengal ranks ninth among states, with 2.92% of India’s merchandise exports, far behind Gujarat (25.04%), Maharashtra (15.87%) and Tamil Nadu (13.43%). Over the four years to 2025-26, its exports fell by about 1.9% a year, while India’s total grew by 1.15% a year. NITI Aayog’s Export Preparedness Index 2024 places Bengal among the “challengers” among large states rather than the leaders.
The problem is not a lack of capability but a lack of focus. Five priorities stand out.
First, the geography of exports is narrow. Kolkata, Howrah and East Midnapore together accounted for about 57% of state exports in 2022-23 (38.2%, 10% and 9.2%, respectively). Beyond them, each district exports something different: Darjeeling tea, Purulia lac, cereals from Purba Bardhaman, steel from Bardhaman and Bankura, marine products and leather from the south.
A uniform incentive will not serve all of them. Howrah’s foundries need technology and energy upgrades, leather needs design and environmental compliance, and fish and vegetables need cold chains and traceability. The One District One Product list should be tested against export evidence and sorted into three tiers: export-ready products that need market support now; upgrade-ready products that need testing, packaging, or processing help; and livelihood products that are better served by domestic branding initially.
Second, Bengal must price in the exposure of its niche sectors. US tariffs peaked at 50% in August 2025 and hit leather, marine products and engineering goods hard. Industry estimates put the state’s exports to the US at about ₹8,000 crore, with ₹5,000-6,000 crore of marine shipments directly hit. Bengal supplies nearly half of India’s leather exports.
Although tariff rates have since eased, trade trackers report a 10% Section 301 duty on most Indian goods since 24 July, while an agreement remains under negotiation. A regular, sector-wise sensitivity assessment should become part of the policy.
The same applies to carbon border mechanisms: the European Union’s covers iron and steel, and so will the UK’s from 1 January 2027, with no exemption secured for India under the new trade agreement. Bengal’s steel has so far gone mostly to Nepal, the UAE and Bangladesh, but the exposure will grow as exporters turn to Europe and the UK.
Third, neighbourhood trade is industrial policy, and the new trade deals are an opening. Bangladesh took 17.4% of Bengal’s exports in 2022-23, but the corridor is fragile: daily truck movements at Petrapole, which handles about 70% of India-Bangladesh land trade, fell from 600-700 to under 200 within a week of the May 2025 curbs.
With Bangladesh hoping to reopen closed land ports and the Centre planning more in Bengal, the state should have border-side testing, warehousing, cold chain and payment support ready. The India-UK deal and the concluded India-EU talks also open new markets, but micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) will need help with rules of origin, certification and finding buyers.
Fourth, logistics need sequencing and the basket needs value addition. In June, the government dropped the long-delayed Tajpur deepsea port for Dadanpatrabar, but the finance minister has said such a port takes around 15 years to build, and exporters cannot wait that long.
Syama Prasad Mookerjee Port handled about 254,000 containers in the first quarter of 2026-27, 8.4% more than a year earlier, so the quicker gains lie in faster evacuation by rail and road, feeder and inland waterway links, minor ports and the budget’s Dankuni and Siliguri logistics hubs. Value addition matters just as much: steel into downstream engineering goods, human hair and leather into designed, branded products, and tea into Geographical Indication (GI)-backed premium packs. The budget’s common tea processing centre at Siliguri, tea processing zone at the Kolkata port and proposed national institute of design point the same way.
Fifth, the workforce will not keep growing indefinitely. West Bengal’s fertility rate is already well below the replacement level of 2.1, raising the prospect of a plateauing and eventual decline in its working-age population, potentially earlier than in younger states.
The state’s export sectors are labour-intensive: the Bantala leather hub alone employs about 500,000 people, and foundry-linked exports support 50,000 to 100,000 jobs. Policy should therefore raise output per worker through skilling, formal contracts, health and social security, and better-equipped factories. The budget’s proposal to allow round-the-clock operation of logistics and services, with labour safeguards, should be piloted first where it helps exporters.
Bengal has the gateway, the products and a government that has put industry first. The next export policy should build district-wise, sector-wise export systems, and measure success by how reliably and competitively goods move through Kolkata and Haldia to global markets.
Badri Narayanan Gopalakrishnan is the founder of Infisum, a global policy and strategy research think tank, and is also fellow at NITI Aayog. Somewrit Maiti is an associate research fellow at Infisum. The views expressed are personal.
