India’s trade deficit surged 141% in October 2025 to $21.8 billion due to surging imports, driven in large part by a festival-related jump in gold imports, and subdued merchandise exports, official data showed.

India’s total exports in October 2025 stood at $72.9 billion, down marginally from $73.4 billion in October last year. India’s total imports jumped to $94.7 billion in October this year, compared with $82.4 billion in October 2024. As a result, the trade deficit grew to $21.8 billion in October this year from $9.05 billion last year.

“There are two things that have brought this increase in the trade deficit about,” Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agrawal said at a press briefing. “The first is gold and the other is silver. The increase in gold imports has been phenomenal in October despite very high global prices.” 

“In silver also, the growth has been phenomenal,” he explained. “If you combine these two, these account for the additional trade deficit.”

Gold imports grew nearly 200% in October 2025 to $14.7 billion from $4.9 billion in October 2024. In fact, gold imports in October reversed the trend that had been seen in the April-September period of this financial year. 

That is, while gold imports in the April-September 2025 period were 8.7% lower than in the same period of the previous year, the jump in October meant that gold imports in April-October 2025 were 21.4% higher than in April-October 2024.

Similarly, silver imports grew nearly 530% in October 2025 to $2.7 billion. 

“An uninterrupted rise in gold prices ahead of the festive season may have led to speculative demand which may not sustain going ahead, possibly leading to some cooling in the import numbers in the ensuing months,” Aditi Nayar, chief economist at ICRA said. “Nevertheless, the non-oil, non-gold imports rose by a substantial 12.4% year-on-year, led by fertilisers, machinery, electronic goods, non-ferrous metals, and silver.”

Digging deeper into India’s total exports, the merchandise exports fell 11.8% to $34.4 billion in October 2025, while services exports grew 11.9% to $38.5 billion. 

On the imports side, merchandise imports grew 16.7% in October 2025 to $76.1 billion and services imports grew 8.1% to $18.6 billion.