Full 8-year history (FY2018-19 – FY2025-26) for every 2-digit HS chapter, from the same TRADESTAT pull as the trade-balance bulletin — this time tracking each chapter's own trajectory, not just its latest-year snapshot, to separate "large" from "fast-growing."
Fertilisers and electronics are India's fastest-growing big-ticket imports
Top 12 import chapters, by FY2025-26 value
Sparklines are independently scaled per chapter, to show shape of trend, not relative size.
View full 8-year table, top 12 import chapters
Which big imports are growing fastest?
Same 12 chapters as above, re-ranked by growth rate (CAGR), not size.
Fertilisers (HS31) posts the highest eight-year CAGR among India's dozen largest imports — +118.9% since FY2018-19 (11.8% a year) — but that number describes an endpoint, not a trend. The chapter sat flat near $6.7bn for three years, jumped to $12.8bn in FY2021-22 and peaked at $15.3bn in FY2022-23, collapsed back to $8.3bn by FY2024-25, then spiked again to $14.6bn. It is the most volatile chapter here, not the fastest-growing one; see the shape note below. Electrical machinery (HS85) — semiconductors, components, consumer electronics — has doubled (+101.5%, 10.5% CAGR), and edible oils (HS15) are close behind (+97.9%). By contrast, mineral fuels, the single largest import by far, has grown only 21.2% over the same eight years — it's big, but not the fastest-moving part of the story.
Before using any CAGR on this page: check the shape
A compound annual rate is two numbers, eight years apart. It is only a growth rate if the six years in between sit on the line.
Ranking chapters by CAGR quietly assumes each one grew. Splitting the window at FY2021-22 — the pandemic-and-commodity-shock hinge — shows that for a third of these chapters the two halves point different ways, and the eight-year rate describes neither:
| Chapter | Side | FY2019–22, % a year | FY2022–26, % a year | 8-year CAGR, % | Shape |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Iron & steel | Export | +33.0 | −18.1 | 0.8 | Round trip: $9.7bn → $22.9bn → $10.3bn |
| Mineral fuels & oils | Export | +13.2 | −5.3 | 2.2 | Peaked FY2022-23, now 45% off peak |
| Aircraft & spacecraft | Import | −13.1 | +28.9 | 8.8 | Collapse then recovery |
| Fertilisers | Import | +24.2 | +3.4 | 11.8 | Two spikes, one collapse |
| Animal/veg fats & oils | Import | +24.6 | +0.5 | 10.2 | Front-loaded; flat since |
| Organic chemicals | Import | +8.4 | −2.8 | 1.8 | Sign flip |
| Cereals | Export | +16.4 | −1.7 | 5.7 | Sign flip |
| Electrical machinery | Export | +16.6 | +27.9 | 22.9 | Real trend, accelerating |
| Electrical machinery | Import | +6.3 | +13.8 | 10.5 | Real trend, accelerating |
Across all 24 chapters on this page, 10 finished at their eight-year peak — those are genuine trends and their CAGRs mean what they appear to mean. Four are round trips, ending 20% or more below a peak they hit mid-window. The remaining ten sit somewhere between. Iron & steel exports are the extreme case: 0.8% a year over eight years is arithmetically correct and tells you nothing, because the series more than doubled to $22.9bn in FY2021-22 and gave all of it back.
The two chapters worth trusting the rate on are the electrical-machinery lines, imports and exports, which grew in both halves and finished at their peaks. Exports went $12.7bn → $54.0bn without a reversal — that is what a 22.9% CAGR should look like. Everything else on this page needs the sparkline read alongside the number.
Top 12 export chapters, by FY2025-26 value
Same treatment, export side.
Electrical machinery (HS85) is the standout export story: from $12.7bn to $54.0bn, +324% (22.9% CAGR) — by far the fastest-growing chapter on either side of the ledger, consistent with India's electronics-assembly export push. Pearls, gems & jewellery (HS71) is the one major chapter moving the wrong way for exports: -29.9% since FY2018-19, by far the steepest decliner among either top-12 list (HS61 knitted apparel and HS62 non-knitted apparel also dipped slightly, -2.3% and -2.0%).
View full 8-year table, top 12 export chapters
Reading this against the deficit
The trade-balance bulletin elsewhere in this repo shows mineral fuels and gems/jewellery as the two largest deficit-driving chapters — but this history shows neither is where the deficit's momentum is coming from. Mineral fuels imports have grown a modest 21.2% over eight years (largely price-driven, not a structural shift), and gems/jewellery imports (+69.1%) are growing roughly in line with the broader deficit chapters.
The chapters actually accelerating — fertilisers, electrical machinery, edible oils — point to where new import dependency is building: energy-intensive fertiliser production, electronics components not yet made domestically at scale, and edible oil consumption outpacing domestic oilseed output. Electrical machinery is unusual in that it's growing fast on both sides of the ledger (imports of components, exports of assembled goods) — consistent with India importing parts for final assembly and re-export, rather than either pure import substitution or pure domestic manufacturing.
Independently corroborated by DPIIT's own 2025-26 Annual Report (not a trade-data source — it doesn't publish a balance-of-trade series — but its Industrial Entrepreneur Memorandum investment-intention data, Appendix IV): proposed domestic investment in Electricals Equipment jumped from ₹65,979 crore (2021) to ₹233,829 crore (2024), and in Fertilizers from ₹1,112 crore (2021) to ₹41,127 crore (2024) — the same two sectors flagged here as the fastest-growing high-value imports are also where India's domestic capacity-building investment is scaling up fastest, an independent confirmation from a completely different data system (industrial licensing filings, not customs data). DPIIT's "24 champion sub-sectors" programme separately names electronics and aluminium among sectors selected partly for "need for import substitution" — the same conclusion this chart reaches from the trade numbers alone.
- Growth and CAGR are computed FY2018-19 → FY2025-26 (7 growth periods over 8 fiscal years). FY2025-26 is the most recent data available (updated 19 May 2026 per source), not necessarily a complete fiscal year — treat the endpoint as provisional.
- Sparklines use an independent y-scale per chapter — they show the shape of each chapter's trajectory, not relative size between chapters. Use the labeled FY18-19 → FY25-26 values (or the ranked list order) to compare magnitude; use the CAGR chart to compare growth rate.
- "Top 12" is by absolute latest-year value, not by growth rate or by trade balance — a chapter can be simultaneously one of the largest imports and a shrinking one (see gems & jewellery, export side).
- Top 12 import chapters account for 81.5% of all FY2025-26 imports; the remaining 86 chapters share the other 18.5%.
- Same TRADESTAT pull and scraping method as the trade-balance bulletin: the government query form requires visiting the search page first to establish a session before the underlying data request will succeed (each query returns 2 fiscal years).
- Totals cross-validated against the Commerce Ministry's TIA Portal, DGFT, and PIB; DPIIT investment-intention data used as independent corroboration, not a trade-data source. See data/trade_data_cross_validation_2026-07-18.json.
About this article: Researched, written and edited by Umashankar Triplicane Dwarakanathan, with AI research assistance; every figure is meant to trace to the primary source cited. See the Editorial Policy for how sourcing, AI use and corrections work.
