NITI Aayog released the 8th edition of ‘Trade Watch Quarterly’ (fourth quarter of FY 2025–26)

NITI Aayog released the 8th edition of ‘Trade Watch Quarterly’ (fourth quarter of FY 2025–26)

NITI Aayog released the 8th edition of Trade Watch Quarterly (Q4 FY 2025–26), highlighting India’s resilient trade performance and examining opportunities and challenges in strengthening India’s pharmaceutical sector.

Trade Watch Quarterly

¨     Trade Watch Quarterly is a flagship publication of the NITI Aayog that provides a data-driven assessment of global and domestic trade trends.

¨     Edition: Quarter 4 (January–March 2026), FY 2025–26.

¨     It evaluates India’s merchandise and services trade performance and offers policy recommendations to improve competitiveness.

¨     The thematic focus of this edition is India’s Pharmaceutical and Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API) Trade, assessing export opportunities, competitiveness, supply-chain vulnerabilities, and future growth prospects.

Key Findings

¨     India’s Overall Trade Performance: India’s total merchandise and services trade grew by 5.4% YoY in FY 2025–26, reaching $1.84 trillion. Exports increased by 4.2%, while imports grew by 6.5%. Merchandise exports declined by 2.8% in Q4 FY 2025–26, whereas imports increased by 11.9%.Services exports remained a major strength, growing by 9%, significantly outpacing services import growth of 4.1%.

¨     Rising Importance of Services Trade: India remained the world’s 8th-largest services exporter in 2025. Services exports recorded a 10.3% CAGR (2015–2025), exceeding the global average of 6.6%. India’s share in global services exports increased to 4.3%. Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and support services accounted for 63.5% of software services exports. Europe’s share in India’s services exports rose to 33%, indicating greater market diversification.

¨     Global Pharmaceutical Market Opportunity: Global pharmaceutical and API demand reached approximately $1.3 trillion in 2025. Formulations accounted for $961.8 billion (75%), while APIs accounted for $261.2 billion. India exported pharmaceutical and API products worth $35.8 billion, but its global export share remained only 2.8%, indicating significant expansion potential.

¨     Strengths of India’s Pharmaceutical Sector: Contributes over 1.7% of GDP and 7.2% of manufacturing GVA. Supports around 27 lakh livelihoods. India is among the world’s largest suppliers of Generic medicines, vaccines, and Essential drugs. Retail medicaments and generic drugs (HS 3004) remain India’s strongest export segment, accounting for $22.6 billion exports and 4% share of global demand.