# <u>Measures of complementarities</u>

The typical way to measure complementarity between countries is to compare one country’s import flows with the other country’s export flows at disaggregated sectoral level. The closer the sectoral composition of the two flows, the higher the complementarity -- and potential gains from trade. However these data are not available at the district level for our countries.

The next best alternative would be to use data representative of the overall district’s production. Unfortunately the production data – reported in tables 5 and 6 above - are not really suitable for a comparison of districts across the border. They are relatively outdated and refer to different time periods. More importantly they are highly aggregated and use different sectoral classifications.

Therefore we try to compare the districts on each side of the borders through their employment composition. As shown in Table 7, in the case of the Indian districts this composition reflects to a large extent that of production, albeit with some relevant differences – for example, sectors like mining (in Darjeeling) and manufacturing appear to be far more important in employment than in the production structure.<sup>9</sup>

**Table 7: Employment structure in Indian districts (share of total), 2009/10**

|Darjeeling||Uttar Dinajpur||
|---|---|---|---|
|Sector|Share|Sector|Share|
|Agriculture, hunting and related service activities|18.1%|Agriculture, hunting and related service activities|34.7%|
|Retail trade|13.4%|Construction|12.2%|
|Other mining and quarrying|10.0%|Manufacture of textiles|9.1%|
|Wholesale trade and commission trade|8.4%|Land transport; transport via pipelines|6.7%|
|Hotels and restaurants|7.8%|Manufacture of food products and beverages|5.5%|
|Manufacture of food products and beverages|7.4%|Retail trade|5.4%|
|Land transport; transport via pipelines|6.8%|Manufacture of wood and cork|4.6%|
|Construction|6.6%|Education|4.3%|
|Public administration and defense|6.3%|Wholesale trade and commission trade|3.9%|
|Manufacture of basic metals|3.3%|Manufacture of other transport equipment|2.5%|
|Education|2.9%|Other service activities|1.8%|
|Private households with employed persons|2.8%|Private households with employed persons|1.7%|
|Manufacture of wearing apparel|2.2%|Manufacture of wearing apparel|1.7%|
|Manufacture of wood and cork|1.1%|Manufacture of fabricated metal products|1.3%|
|Financial intermediation|0.8%|Health and social work|1.1%|
|Supporting and auxiliary transport activities|0.7%|Manufacture of non-metallic mineral products|0.8%|
|Manufacture of chemicals and chemical products|0.5%|Hotels and restaurants|0.6%|
|Manufacture of coke, refined petroleum products|0.4%|Manufacture of furniture; manufacturing|0.5%|
|Manufacture of furniture|0.4%|Computer and related activities|0.4%|
|Other service activities|0.2%|Supporting and auxiliary transport activities|0.3%|
|||Other business activities|0.2%|
|||Public administration and defense|0.2%|
|||Tanning and dressing of leather|0.2%|
|||Manufacture of machinery and equipment|0.2%|
|||Sale, maintenance and repair of motor vehicles|0.1%|
|Total|100%|Total|100%|

_Source: Indian National Sample Survey, 2009-10_

> 9 This issue may be due to the mobility of people, who may work in other districts despite maintaining the residence in their original one. Thus the employment structure may not reflect the production structure as accurately as we would like.

14