Can Servicification Benefit Manufacturing Exports? Empirical Results for India

To enhance manufacturing exports, India, a major player in the services segment, has recently created an enabling environment through the launch of several programmes, for example, the ‘Make-in-India’ and the production-linked incentive (PLI) schemes. As the firm-level evidence on the synergies between services input use (i.e., servicification) and manufacturing exports in the country is relatively scarce, the current analysis studies the relationship between them by using the CMIE-Prowess dataset over a period of 2000–2019, for both new and existing exporting firms. At the firm level, the article uses a two-step system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator for studying the impact on export intensity, while a dynamic panel probit model is used to study the impacts on the decision to export. Apart from the analysis at the aggregate level, the influence of servicification is also judged for the low-tech and mid-to-hi-tech sectors separately and the disaggregated industry level. The observed positive relationship between servicification and manufacturing exports implies that the integration of competitiveness in the field of services with hi-tech manufacturing sectors can enhance India’s exports on the one hand and deepen firm-level global value chains participation on the other hand. JEL Codes: C23, F12, F14, F23, L25, L80