India’s trade with the BRICS grouping has more than doubled in five years. But the expansion has not produced a balanced commercial relationship. Instead, imports from BRICS countries have risen much faster than Indian exports, pushing the country’s trade deficit with the grouping to $226.1 billion in FY2026, according to figures from the Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI) reported by Economic Times.
The number is significant not only because of its scale, but because it describes a changing economic geography. BRICS countries have become a much larger source of goods for India without becoming a comparable destination for Indian products. Their share of India’s merchandise imports rose from 35.2% in FY2021 to 41.5% in FY2026. Their share of India’s exports, however, slipped from 22% to 21.7%.
That divergence raises a broader question about what deeper trade within a large emerging-market grouping actually means for India. Greater commercial integration can create new markets, suppliers and logistics links. But if the flow of goods remains concentrated in imports, the result may be greater dependence without a matching expansion of domestic production or export capacity.
The underlying figures show how quickly the gap has widened. India’s total goods trade with the 11-member BRICS grouping increased from $203.1 billion in FY2021 to $417.5 billion in FY2026. Exports rose 48.8%, from $64.3 billion to $95.7 billion. Imports, by contrast, increased 131.8%, from $138.8 billion to $321.8 billion.
This was not simply a consequence of trade becoming more important overall. India’s exports to countries outside BRICS grew by 52% over the same period, reaching $345.8 billion, slightly faster than the growth of exports to BRICS. Imports from outside the grouping also rose, but at a slower rate: 77.6%, to $453.9 billion. The BRICS relationship therefore stands out for the speed at which imports have expanded relative to exports.
The concentration of the imbalance is another important feature. China, the United Arab Emirates and Russia together accounted for almost 84% of India’s imports from BRICS in FY2026. China alone represented about 41% of those imports.
India’s imports from China more than doubled, from $65.2 billion in FY2021 to $131.6 billion in FY2026. Indian exports to China moved in the opposite direction, declining 8.1%, from $21.2 billion to $19.5 billion. The figures point to a relationship in which China has become an increasingly important supplier to India while Indian access to the Chinese market has not expanded in parallel.
Russia produced a different but equally consequential pattern. Indian imports from Russia increased more than tenfold, from $5.5 billion to $55.4 billion, driven mainly by higher energy purchases. Indian exports to Russia rose from approximately $2.7 billion to $4.5 billion. The increase in trade was therefore heavily weighted towards India’s purchases.
The UAE was the largest destination for Indian exports within BRICS in FY2026. Indian shipments to the UAE rose 124% to $37.4 billion, while imports from the UAE climbed 140% to $63.9 billion. Saudi Arabia was the next-largest BRICS export market for India, at $10.3 billion, followed by Brazil and South Africa at approximately $7 billion each. Russia and Indonesia received about $4.5 billion each. Exports to Indonesia, Iran and Ethiopia declined compared with FY2021.
These country-level patterns matter because a headline trade deficit can conceal different types of exposure. Imports from China reflect one set of questions around industrial goods, supply chains and market access. Imports from Russia are linked mainly to energy purchases in the figures presented. Trade with the UAE combines a major export market with a rapidly expanding import relationship. Treating the entire BRICS deficit as a single phenomenon would therefore miss the distinct drivers within it.
The broader BRICS picture also challenges the idea that the grouping already functions as a deeply integrated trading bloc. The 11 economies—Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the UAE—exported $5.67 trillion in goods in 2025, equivalent to 21.6% of global merchandise exports, according to the GTRI analysis cited in the report. Their imports totalled $4.58 trillion, or 17.3% of world imports.
Yet trade among BRICS members was comparatively limited. The economies exported approximately $1.1 trillion to one another, representing 18.8% of their combined exports. They imported about $1.4 trillion from fellow members, equal to 29.5% of their overall imports. In relation to global trade, intra-BRICS exports represented 4.1% of global exports, while intra-BRICS imports represented 5.4% of global imports.
The figures suggest that BRICS has substantial weight in world commerce without operating as a balanced internal market. Its members are major trading economies, but their commercial relationships with one another remain uneven and are strongly shaped by the position of China.
China’s centrality is visible in the intra-BRICS data. It exported $550.8 billion in goods to other members and imported $464.9 billion from them. India recorded the largest trade deficit within the grouping at $226.1 billion. GTRI founder Ajay Srivastava described the pattern as a China-centred hub-and-spoke arrangement rather than a balanced trading network.
That description places India’s deficit within an institutional and logistical problem, not only a bilateral one. Trade can grow rapidly when supply chains, payment systems and transport links make imports easier. Export growth requires additional conditions: market access, competitive products, compliance with foreign standards, reliable logistics and the ability to overcome non-tariff barriers. The supplied figures show the outcome of the imbalance, but do not establish which individual barriers account for each sector or country.
The policy response identified by GTRI includes better market access in China, Russia and Indonesia, action on non-tariff barriers, a shift towards higher-value exports, reduced dependence on a few BRICS suppliers, improved logistics and more diversified supply chains. The report also points to local-currency settlements as one possible way to facilitate commerce within the grouping. These measures address different parts of the problem and should not be treated as interchangeable. Payment arrangements may ease transactions, for example, but they cannot by themselves create demand for Indian exports or remove product-level restrictions.
The institutional challenge is also wider than BRICS policy. India’s global merchandise trade deficit increased from $102.6 billion in FY2021 to $334.3 billion in FY2026. During that period, goods exports rose from $291.8 billion to $441.5 billion, while imports increased from $394.4 billion to $775.7 billion. The BRICS deficit is therefore part of a broader expansion in which imports have outpaced exports across India’s merchandise trade.
This wider context changes how the BRICS number should be interpreted. The grouping is not the sole source of India’s trade imbalance, but it is an especially important component because its share of India’s imports has grown while its share of exports has remained broadly flat. The issue is less whether India should trade more with BRICS than whether additional trade can be structured around stronger export participation.
For cities and the built environment, the connection is indirect but material. Trade deficits shape the demand for ports, warehouses, industrial land, freight corridors, energy infrastructure and customs facilities. A larger import flow can increase pressure on logistics systems, while weak export growth can limit the development of manufacturing clusters that depend on predictable access to overseas markets. The supplied report does not quantify these infrastructure effects, but its trade patterns identify the economic flows that infrastructure must support.
The evidence also leaves important questions unresolved. The data presented do not show which product categories account for the largest changes in imports and exports, how the deficit is distributed across Indian states, or whether particular sectors are gaining export access within individual BRICS markets. The intra-BRICS estimates use the latest WITS data available for individual economies, with reference years varying between 2020 and 2025. That difference in reference years is relevant when comparing the wider grouping with India’s FY2026 figures.
What the available evidence does establish is a clear asymmetry. India’s BRICS trade has expanded, but imports have driven the growth. China, Russia and the UAE account for most of the import increase, while Indian exports remain concentrated in a smaller set of markets and have declined in some countries. At the level of the grouping, China occupies the central position in intra-BRICS commerce.
The next stage of the debate is therefore not simply about expanding trade with BRICS. It is about whether market access, product competitiveness, logistics, supply-chain diversification and institutional arrangements can allow Indian exports to grow alongside imports. Until that balance changes, deeper trade within BRICS could increase India’s commercial exposure without resolving the deficit that the latest figures have brought into focus.
