Mumbai, April 3 : India’s trade directions, including merchandise exports and imports, remain steady despite steep tariff challenges and escalating geopolitical conflicts in the last financial year 2025-26 (April-February), states the industry body ASSOCHAM in a press statement released here today.
The last financial year, 2025-26, was an extremely challenging year for India’s trade trajectory, and we have demonstrated our resilience in a significant way, said Mr Nirmal Kumar Minda, President, ASSOCHAM.
India’s top ten trade partners showed no significant change in their composition compared to 2024-25.
Our top export destination, the USA, surprisingly remained in the same position and share from April to February 2026 compared to FY 2025-26, while the UAE, China, the Netherlands, and the UK maintained their places in the top five.
Furthermore, the trade trend indicates an increase in exports to the USA in April-February 2026 ($79.3 billion) compared to the same period last year, which was $76.3 billion.
Apart from Hong Kong at tenth position (replacing Australia), there are no other changes in India’s top export destinations for April-February 2026 compared to the previous year.
India’s Trade Resilience so far
|
Indicators |
2024-25 (Apr-Mar) |
2025-26 (Apr-Feb) |
Remarks |
|
Top Export Destination |
USA (20%) |
USA (20%) |
Remain Same |
|
Top 10 Export Destination |
USA, UAE, Netherlands, UK, China, Singapore, Saudi Arab, Bangladesh, Germany, Australia |
USA, UAE, China, Netherlands, UK, Germany, Saudi Arab, Bangladesh, Singapore, Hong Kong |
Hongkong entered in top 10 from 19th position in 2024-25 |
|
Top Import Source |
China (16%) |
China (17%) |
Up by 1% |
|
Top 10 Import Source |
China, Russia, UAE, USA, Saudi Arab, Iraq, Indonesia, Switzerland, Singapore, Korea |
China, UAE, Russia, USA, Saudi Arab, Iraq, Switzerland, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan |
Entry of Hong Kong and Japan in top 10 from 11th and 13th position in 2024-25. |
Source: ASSOCHAM Global Research
China remained India’s top source country for imports, surpassing last year’s figures during the 11-month period of fiscal 2025-26. Additionally, the top ten source countries remained the same, except that Hong Kong and Japan replaced Indonesia and Korea.
This supply chain trajectory reflects India’s strong resilience, supported by the government’s trade facilitation measures and our traders’ efforts to mitigate the worst impacts and turn adversities into opportunities, said the industry body ASSOCHAM.
We are confident that India’s export resilience will grow stronger with the support of recent policy actions and reforms, such as the RoDTEP scheme extension until 30th September 2026, approval of the Bharat Audyogik Vikas Yojna (BHAVYA) Scheme for plug-and-play industrial parks, and the extension of the Export Obligation (EO) period for specific Advance Authorisations and Export Promotion Capital Goods (EPCG) Authorisations until 31 August 2026, among others.
We believe that India’s total merchandise exports will be between USD 440 billion and USD 450 billion for 2025-26, compared with USD 437 billion in 2024-25.
Going forward, we expect our exports to grow this financial year strongly, supported by the resilience we built last year and our strategic diversification into key alternative markets.
