New Delhi: India’s growth in merchandise exports, especially its smartphone and pharmaceutical success stories, are built on its imports of parts and components from China. A number of components used in the manufacturing of smartphones, for example, have seen over 50 percent growth in imports from China during the first three months of the current financial year compared with the corresponding period of the last fiscal.
The first four months of the 2026-2027 financial year has seen India’s merchandise exports grow at an impressive pace, clocking in a 17.04 percent increase in comparison to the corresponding period last year. However, even as merchandise exports have grown, imports of goods have gone up 19.27 percent between the same period. India’s merchandise imports for April-July 2026 stood at roughly $292.38 billion—up from $245.14 billion last year, according to the latest figures published by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
A large part of India’s imports remain petroleum products and gems and jewellery. The price of petroleum imports will naturally be higher this year than the last, given the surge in global oil prices following the US war with Iran. However, even removing petroleum products and gems and jewellery from India’s import calculations, its overall merchandise imports have grown by around $30 billion to $192.03 billion during the first four months of this year from around $160.95 billion in the last. A part of the increase from the monthly figures made available by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry can be attributed to the increasing imports of components for India’s own manufacturing sector. An analysis of the monthly data made available by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry shows that the import of electrical components including the import of printed circuit boards, which can be used in smartphone manufacturing, from China has grown 78 percent between April and June 2026, in comparison to the corresponding period last year. India imported roughly $4.122 billion worth of electrical components (HS Code: 8517) from China in the first quarter of this fiscal. In the first three months of the previous financial year, India’s imports of these goods from China stood at $2.311 billion. India’s overall imports of goods under HS Code 8517 stood at $6.090 billion in the first three months of this fiscal. Chinese imports account for 67 percent of all overall imports of goods under this specific HS Code. Infographic: Manya Aggarwal/ThePrint
