What India Really Wants From BRICS As Trade Deficit Widens
India is leveraging its role as chair of the 18th BRICS Summit to address a widening trade deficit with member nations. While trade volume has doubled in five years, imports from the bloc have significantly outpaced exports, prompting India to seek better market access.
Why it matters
The trade imbalance highlights structural economic challenges within BRICS and India's strategic need to balance its reliance on Chinese industrial inputs.
As world leaders converge on Bharat Mandapam for the 18th BRICS Summit this weekend, India is using its turn as chair to press a pointed ask of its partners: easier market access, and a fairer shot at selling into the bloc it helped build. Behind that ask lies a trade relationship that has grown fast, but lopsidedly.Fresh trade data shows India's deficit with BRICS nations has widened to $226.1 billion in FY2025-26, even as overall trade with the bloc has grown to about $417.5 billion -- more than double the roughly $203 billion recorded five years ago in FY2020-21.A separate calendar-year analysis by Rubix Data Sciences put India's BRICS trade deficit at $224 billion in CY2025, up from $117 billion in CY2021 -- with China (over $100 billion) and Russia (around $55 billion) as the two biggest contributors.
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