New Delhi: India’s merchandise exports hit an all-time high for the month of October, touching $49.47 billion, while the monthly imports hit a high of $89.35 billion, according to latest data published Friday by the Union Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
The record high growth in monthly exports is backed by a strong showing in goods, such as refined petroleum products, engineering goods, electronics, and gems and jewellery. India’s imports have also seen an increase, led mostly by rise in global oil prices, as well as those of electronics and machinery.
In a briefing to media persons, Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agrawal termed the October export data as the “highest trade growth we have achieved in a month, and the highest ever merchandise export in any month.”
He added: “The growth in exports is broad based across countries and regions…43 out of our top 50 export destinations posted positive growth in October 2026, in comparison to 2025. The key drivers have been Spain, which had a 352 percent growth. Malaysia, Togo, Singapore, and South Africa have all had more than 100 percent growth [in exports].”
The rise in exports, Agrawal noted, was largely due to the increase in exports of refined petroleum products, other cereals, oils, electronics and handicrafts. The Commerce Secretary further highlighted that if growth of exports, both in goods and services, continues in the same trajectory, India should be able to achieve $1 trillion in exports by the end of this financial year.
In the first six months of the 2026-2027 fiscal (April-September), India’s overall exports—in both goods and services—stood at $568.84 billion, up 16.66 percent year-on-year. The rise in merchandise exports and imports in the first seven months, until October—the data for which was published Friday—is driven largely by rising prices of petroleum products.
Last month, India exported $8.89 billion worth of refined petroleum products, a 140 percent increase from October 2025, when roughly $3.7 billion worth of these goods were exported globally. The rise is both due to an increase in quantity and price. Global petroleum prices, especially the price of crude oil, hit $116 a barrel on the Brent crude oil futures in the middle of October due to the tensions in West Asia.
Even as the share of petroleum products rose in exports, India’s own import bill also saw a 54 percent increase in October this year, in comparison to last year. Last month, India imported $22.81 billion worth of crude and petroleum products, up from $14.78 billion in the same month in the 2025-26 fiscal.
The overall exports of petroleum products, in the first seven months of this financial year, grew 47.71 percent to $49.83 billion, versus $33.73 billion during the same period in previous year. The export of refined petroleum products accounts for 16.12 percent of the country’s total merchandise exports in the first seven months of the current fiscal year, up from 13.31 percent in the same period in previous year.
At the same time, India’s own petroleum import bill grew from $92.6 billion in the April-October period of FY 2025-26 to $130 billion in the current fiscal, a growth of 40.5 percent.
When questioned on the petroleum price rise link to India’s export growth, Agrawal expressed confidence in the export trajectory, pointing out that any fall in price could lead to an increase in demand, thereby allowing future growth.
“I think our non-oil merchandise export growth in October is around 33.5 percent. I agree that the increase in oil exports is because of both rise in prices and higher demand for refined products, and is adding a positive momentum to India’s export growth. I remain optimistic that this growth will remain robust in the next half of the year,” he said. “The fall in oil prices will have some impact on our exports. Normally when prices go up, it contracts demand. With prices going down, the demand could compensate for any decrease in value.”
Electronics continue to show strong growth in India’s total export basket. Exports of electronics saw a 62.7 percent increase in October, in comparison to the same month in 2025. India exported $6.64 billion worth of electronics in October this year, up from $4 billion the previous year. India’s overall exports of electronics in the first seven months of the current fiscal stood at $38.6 billion, a 46.92 increase from $26.2 billion between April and October 2025.
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US remains top export market, growth seen in China
The US remains India’s top export destination. Between April and October this year, Indian exporters exported roughly $59.52 billion worth of merchandise to the United States, up from $51.99 billion during the same period the previous year.
Exports to China have also seen a growth, touching $13.77 billion in the first seven months of the current fiscal year, up from $10 billion. China is now India’s third largest merchandise export destination.
India’s goods exports to Singapore, meanwhile, have grown 107 percent in the first seven months of the current fiscal year, compared to last one. The merchandise exports to Singapore grew to $13.14 billion this year, up from $6.33 billion, driven largely by purchase of refined petroleum products. With the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, Singapore’s main source of refined petroleum products has since moved to India.
India’s electronics exports have seen major diversification in the types of goods exported. India’s smartphone exports are now only around 56.9 percent of the total electronics exports. India’s non-smartphone exports have grown from 39.7 percent between April and September 2025, to roughly 43.2 percent of the total electronic exports.
This growth has been driven largely by exports of printed circuit boards (PCBs), network transmission and routing equipment, memory integrated circuits and solid state storage devices.
Indian imports from Russia have seen a 54 percent increase in the first seven months of the current fiscal year, heavily driven by purchase of crude. India has so far imported roughly $55 billion worth of goods from Russia, with a large part of the import basket expected to comprise crude, in the first seven months of the current financial year. In the same period last year, India’s merchandise imports from Russia stood at $35.95 billion.
In a similar vein, India’s imports from China have clocked a 30.6 percent growth in the first seven months of the current fiscal. India’s merchandise imports from China stood at $96.61 billion between April and October 2026, up from $73.96 billion in the same period last year.
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)
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