Blitz India Business
NEW DELHI: April-June 2026-27 exports rose 11.37 per cent. The whole of 2025-26 rose 4.22 per cent. The ratio between those two numbers is the story.
Cumulative exports of merchandise and services during April-June 2026-27 are estimated at $232.73 billion, against $208.98 billion in the same quarter of 2025-26 — growth of 11.37 per cent. Set that against the full financial year just closed: cumulative exports in 2025-26 were estimated at $860.09 billion, against $825.26 billion in 2024-25, growth of 4.22 per cent.
The first quarter of this financial year is therefore running at roughly 2.7 times the growth rate of the year before it. That is a large acceleration by any standard, and the honest first observation about it is a statistical one: a single quarter is a single quarter. Base effects, front-loading ahead of tariff changes, and the timing of large services contracts can all flatter a three-month comparison in ways a twelve-month comparison irons out.
The merchandise half: Container handling at Jawaharlal Nehru Port, Nhava Sheva. India’s headline export figure combines merchandise moving through gateways such as this with services exports that never touch a quay — which is why the composition of any acceleration matters as much as its size.
$232.73 billion in one quarter, against $860.09 billion for the whole of the previous year. Annualise the quarter naively and you get $930.92 billion — which is the arithmetic, not the forecast, and the distinction is the point.
At a Glance
• April-June 2026-27: $232.73 billion (merchandise and services)
• April-June 2025-26: $208.98 billion
• Quarterly growth: 11.37 per cent
• Full year 2025-26: $860.09 billion
• Full year 2024-25: $825.26 billion
• Annual growth 2025-26: 4.22 per cent
• Ratio: Q1 growth is about 2.7 times the previous full-year rate (Blitz calculation)
What would make the acceleration durable rather than seasonal is composition, and this is where an exporter’s reading should differ from a headline reader’s. Merchandise and services behave differently. Services exports are contracted, recur, and are relatively insensitive to freight rates and port congestion; merchandise is sensitive to all three, plus to tariff schedules. An 11 per cent quarter carried by services renewals implies a different second half from an 11 per cent quarter carried by a surge in shipped goods ahead of a tariff deadline. The monthly quick-estimate releases from the Commerce Ministry are where that split becomes visible, and they are the right series to follow rather than the quarterly aggregate.
The policy backdrop is unusually crowded, which cuts both ways. India is negotiating the Bilateral Trade Agreement with the United States under the February framework that cut reciprocal tariffs to 18 per cent; the fourth India-Singapore Ministerial Roundtable convenes this week with four Union ministers and about 70 firms in attendance; the Commerce Minister has been courting Japanese investment; and exporters are being briefed on European carbon border compliance. Each of those is a channel through which the export number can be extended — and each is also a channel through which it can be interrupted if a negotiation stalls.
The constructive way to read a strong quarter is as a window rather than a verdict. Capacity built now — certification, emissions accounting, logistics contracts, working-capital lines — is what allows a firm to convert a favourable quarter into a larger permanent book. The measure to watch through the rest of 2026-27 is not whether growth stays above 11 per cent, which would be an unreasonable expectation, but whether the full-year rate settles meaningfully above the 4.22 per cent recorded in 2025-26. That is the number that would confirm a change in trend.