India’s trade with BRICS countries has deepened into an import-heavy narrative, with China, Russia and the UAE dominating the widening deficit, highlighting vulnerabilities in external accounts amid geopolitical shifts.
India’s trade with the BRICS grouping has turned into a story of imports outrunning exports, with the imbalance dominated by China, the United Arab Emirates and Russia. Business Standard reported that India bought $321.8 billion of goods from its 10 BRICS partners in financial year 2025-26, while selling them just $95.7 billion, leaving a deficit of $226.1 billion.
That gap was large enough to make up almost 68% of India’s overall merchandise trade deficit of $334.3 billion last year, underscoring how heavily the country’s external accounts depend on a small set of trading relationships. Business Standard said the three biggest contributors , China, the UAE and Russia , accounted for nearly 84% of the BRICS deficit and together supplied goods worth $250.9 billion, or about a third of India’s total merchandise imports.
China remains the main pressure point. According to Business Standard, India’s deficit with Beijing reached $112.2 billion in FY26, after imports from China climbed to $131.6 billion and exports rose to $19.5 billion. In an earlier report, the newspaper said China overtook the US to become India’s largest trading partner in FY26, with bilateral trade of $151.1 billion. Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal is expected to discuss the widening imbalance with his Chinese counterpart on the sidelines of the BRICS summit.
Russia was the second-largest source of the deficit, with imports of $55.4 billion and exports of only $4.5 billion, producing a gap of $50.9 billion. That imbalance widened only after the Russia-Ukraine war began in February 2022, when Moscow started selling crude oil at a discount, Business Standard reported. The UAE also contributed materially to the shortfall, even though it is India’s top export destination among BRICS members and the two countries have a free-trade agreement. India imported nearly $64 billion from the UAE and exported $37.4 billion, leaving a deficit of $26.5 billion, largely driven by crude-oil purchases.
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