Predicting India's High Export Goods Trade: A Machine Learning Approach

The export of leather goods has a pivotal role in bolstering the Indian economy, with India emerging as the world's 4th ranked exporter in this domain. Notably, India's footwear exports, encompassing both leather and non-leather categories, constitute approximately 51% of the total export share within the Indian leather and footwear industry for the fiscal year 2022-23. Recognizing the significance of forecasting export performance as a catalyst for economic growth, this study focuses on five key leather footwear commodities with a rich history of trade. Employing an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model driven by data-driven and deep-learning processes, rooted in a machine learning approach, the research endeavours to unveil trade patterns. Evaluation of the model's efficacy is conducted through various metrics, including Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Mean Absolute Error (MAE), and Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE). The results highlight the superiority of the ANN model leveraging the Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) optimizer over alternative approaches in accurately predicting India's trade dynamics in the leather commodity sector.