Analysis of Demand for Major Spices in India*

India is the largest producer, consumer, and exporter of spices in the world. The demand scenario for major spices in India has been comprehensively examined in the study. The shift in preferences of domestic consumers for food items, increasing urbanization and rising incomes, altered demographic and social factors and the changes in productivity of spices have brought about changes in the pattern of their consumption and demand. A two-stage budgeting framework, which is a recent development in the theory, of demand with quadratic terms of total expenditure / food expenditure and is an appropriate technique for computing the expenditure elasticities, has been employed to work out the expenditure elasticities for spices in India. The resultant expenditure elasticities range between 0.40 and 0.60 and do not show much disparity across different income classes or regions and over the years. Also, the household consumption demand projections for important spices in the country for the years 2005, 2010 and 2015 show that the domestic demand for spices would increase further in the coming years