Impact of pandemic on trade: jewellery and pharmaceutical products

The impact of the coronavirus pandemic on India has been largely disruptive in terms of economic activities as well as the loss of human lives. Almost all the countries worldwide were affected as the movement was restricted which led to disturbance in the demand-supply cycle. Hence, trade plummeted but there were some notable exceptions. We focused our study on two different commodities, one from luxury, i.e., jewellery and precious metals and other from essential goods, i.e., pharmaceuticals. The pharmaceutical product sector being a major example of the exception as we observed a high rise as compared to the forecast based on last five years' data extracted from records of the Ministry of Commerce, India. In contrast to that, sector like jewellery and precious metals saw a steep decline in their trade trajectory as compared to the forecast for the year 2020 when the pandemic spread. This is forecasted using the trajectory of deseasonalised trend line and then estimates are seasonalised quarterly. Thus, the objective of our study is to analyse the effect of lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic on the trade of jewellery and pharmaceutical products in the Indian economy.