BRICS trade in numbers: What exports, imports and the $226 billion deficit reveal
India's total goods trade with the other BRICS members rose about 11.5% year-on-year to roughly $226 billion in the first half of calendar year 2026.
India's trade deficit with the rest of the bloc widened by about 17.2% year-on-year to roughly $130 billion, as imports ($178 billion, up 13.5%) grew far faster than exports ($48 billion, up 4.6%).
China and the UAE were India's two largest BRICS trading partners, accounting for about 37% and 20% of India's total BRICS trade respectively; China and Russia were the largest sources of imports, at about 41% and 20% respectively.
Across the wider 11-member bloc, total merchandise trade grew about 15.4% year-on-year to roughly $5.8 trillion, with imports (up 19.1%) outpacing exports (up 12.5%).
The figures come as the bloc convenes its 18th leaders' summit in New Delhi, with intra-BRICS trade and de-dollarisation of settlement among the discussion themes.
Balance of Trade vs Current Account Deficit
The "trade deficit" figure reported here refers narrowly to the balance of trade — the difference between the value of merchandise (goods) exports and imports — and is a subset of the wider Current Account, which also includes services trade, primary income (interest, dividends, remittances-adjacent investment income) and secondary income (private transfers such as remittances). India typically runs a large merchandise trade deficit but a much smaller current account deficit (CAD) because software and IT-services exports and inward remittances offset a significant share of the goods gap.
Key Details
- Balance of Payments (BoP) has two main accounts: the Current Account (trade in goods/services + income + transfers) and the Capital Account (FDI, FPI, loans, reserve changes).
- India's overall merchandise trade deficit (with all countries, not just BRICS) has consistently exceeded its services trade surplus in recent years, but the gap is narrowed by services and remittance inflows when computing CAD.
- The RBI publishes CAD as a percentage of GDP; a CAD sustainably above roughly 2.5-3% of GDP is generally viewed as a vulnerability for external-sector stability.
- BRICS-specific trade deficit is only one slice of India's total trade account and should not be conflated with the overall CAD.
The reported $130 billion BRICS goods deficit is a bilateral-bloc merchandise figure; students should distinguish it from India's overall CAD, which is a narrower, already-netted macroeconomic indicator watched by the RBI and rating agencies.
China's Dominance in India's BRICS Trade Basket
Within BRICS, China alone accounted for roughly 37% of India's total trade with the bloc and roughly 41% of India's BRICS-sourced imports in the reported period, reflecting India's long-standing import dependence on Chinese intermediate goods — electronics components, active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), telecom equipment, and capital goods — even as the two countries maintain a broader strategic and boundary-related relationship managed separately from trade policy.
Key Details
- India's trade deficit with China specifically has been a recurring concern flagged in government and think-tank trade reports over the past several years, driven by India's reliance on Chinese inputs for electronics assembly, solar modules, and bulk drugs/APIs.
- Government responses to reduce import dependence include Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) schemes (covering electronics, telecom equipment, and bulk drugs/APIs among other sectors) and the Atmanirbhar Bharat push for domestic manufacturing capacity.
- The Ministry of Commerce and Industry tracks bilateral trade data through the Department of Commerce's trade statistics portal; the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) administers related trade-policy instruments.
- Trade dependence on China is a distinct policy issue from India-China strategic/boundary relations, and the two are typically assessed separately in GS Paper 2 (bilateral relations) and GS Paper 3 (trade/economy) contexts.
The trade numbers illustrate that even as BRICS functions as a diplomatic and financial-cooperation platform, intra-bloc trade remains structurally imbalanced, with China as both India's largest bilateral trade partner within BRICS and its largest source of deficit.
BRICS Financial Architecture and De-Dollarisation Push
Reduced reliance on the US dollar for settling trade is a recurring BRICS theme, operationalised mainly through two institutions rather than through the "trade deficit" numbers themselves: the New Development Bank (NDB) and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA), both agreed at the 2014 Fortaleza Summit in Brazil and formally established in 2015.
Key Details
- NDB: headquartered in Shanghai, China; founding members are the original BRICS five (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa); authorised capital of $100 billion, used to fund infrastructure and sustainable-development lending in member and partner countries, increasingly disbursed in local (non-dollar) currencies.
- CRA: a $100 billion pool of contingent (standby) currency-swap commitments among BRICS central banks/treasuries, intended to provide short-term balance-of-payments support and reduce dependence on the IMF and dollar-denominated liquidity in a crisis; India's IMF-linked portion determines how much of its CRA access is available without an IMF programme.
- India has separately pursued bilateral rupee-trade-settlement mechanisms (such as the RBI's Special Rupee Vostro Account framework) with select partners, distinct from any BRICS-wide common-currency proposal, which remains under discussion without formal bloc-wide adoption.
- A proposed "BRICS common currency" has been discussed publicly but has not been adopted as bloc policy; existing mechanisms (NDB, CRA, local-currency settlement) are the concrete, operational steps taken so far.
The trade-in-numbers story is being read alongside summit discussions on reducing dollar dependence — even though the reported deficit itself is a bilateral goods-trade figure unrelated to currency of settlement, it underscores why India has an interest in deeper, more balanced BRICS economic integration rather than only monetary-architecture reform.
India-UAE CEPA as a Comparator to Multilateral BRICS Trade
The UAE, India's second-largest BRICS trade partner (about 20% of the total), is also the counterparty to India's Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), which came into force on 1 May 2022 — illustrating how India pursues bilateral free-trade instruments with individual BRICS members alongside the bloc's broader, non-binding cooperation framework.
Key Details
- India-UAE CEPA (effective 1 May 2022) was India's first comprehensive trade agreement concluded after a gap of nearly a decade, eliminating or reducing tariffs on the bulk of traded goods and including provisions on services, government procurement, and Rules of Origin.
- CEPA is a deeper form of trade agreement than a standard Free Trade Agreement (FTA), typically also covering services trade, investment and non-tariff cooperation, distinguishing it from a narrower goods-only FTA.
- Unlike CEPA, BRICS itself has no binding trade-liberalisation charter or preferential tariff schedule; its trade cooperation operates through political declarations, sectoral working groups and joint statements rather than treaty-bound market access commitments.
- India has similarly concluded CEPAs/FTAs with other trade partners in recent years as part of a broader push to diversify and deepen bilateral trade instruments.
The UAE's position as India's second-largest BRICS trade partner is reinforced by a binding bilateral CEPA, contrasting with the non-binding, consensus-based character of BRICS-wide trade cooperation.
- India-BRICS total goods trade (H1 CY2026): approximately $226 billion, up 11.5% year-on-year.
- India-BRICS trade deficit (H1 CY2026): approximately $130 billion, up 17.2% year-on-year (from ~$111 billion in H1 CY2025).
- India's BRICS imports: approximately $178 billion (+13.5% y-o-y); India's BRICS exports: approximately $48 billion (+4.6% y-o-y).
- China's share of India's total BRICS trade: ~37%; UAE's share: ~20%.
- Largest sources of India's BRICS imports: China (~41%) and Russia (~20%).
- Bloc-wide (11-member) merchandise trade: approximately $5.8 trillion, up 15.4% y-o-y; exports ~$3.2 trillion (+12.5%), imports ~$2.6 trillion (+19.1%).
- NDB and CRA: both established 2015, each with $100 billion in committed capital/liquidity support; NDB headquartered in Shanghai.
- India-UAE CEPA in force since: 1 May 2022.