Almost all of India’s export growth came from services
India sold the world $42.80 billion more in 2024-25 than the year before. Merchandise accounted for $0.35 billion of it.
Between 2023-24 and 2024-25, India’s total exports of goods and services rose from $778.13 billion to $820.93 billion — a gain of $42.80 billion. Merchandise exports contributed $0.35 billion of that gain. Services contributed $42.45 billion, or 99.2% of it.
These are not our numbers. They are the Commerce Ministry’s, from a single press release, and they are consistent with each other to the last decimal.
Two-thirds of the goods deficit is paid for by services
India buys far more physical stuff than it sells. In 2024-25 it imported $720.24 billion of merchandise and exported $437.42 billion, leaving a goods deficit of $282.83 billion — the widest on record, and $41.69 billion worse than the year before.
That gap does not stand alone. On the other side of the ledger India sold $383.51 billion of services and bought $194.95 billion, a surplus of $188.57 billion. Set one against the other and the services surplus covers 66.7% of the goods deficit. What is left — $94.26 billion — is India’s overall trade deficit for the year.
View data table
| Flow | US$ billion |
|---|---|
| Merchandise trade deficit | 282.83 |
| covered by services surplus | 188.57 |
| remaining (overall trade deficit) | 94.26 |
Goods exports were flat. Everything else changed.
Three of the four trade flows moved substantially in 2024-25. Merchandise imports rose $42.03 billion. Services exports rose $42.45 billion. Services imports rose $16.64 billion. Merchandise exports rose $0.35 billion — a change of 0.08% on a base of $437 billion, which is to say, no change at all.
It is worth being precise about what that does and does not mean. Flat headline goods exports conceal real movement underneath: non-petroleum exports were up 6.0% to $374.08 billion, electronic goods up 32.5% to $38.58 billion, drugs and pharmaceuticals up 9.4% to $30.47 billion. The flat total is the sum of those gains and offsetting falls elsewhere, petroleum among them. Composition changed; the total did not.
View data table
| Flow | 2023-24 | 2024-25 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Merchandise imports | 678.21 | 720.24 | +42.03 |
| Merchandise exports | 437.07 | 437.42 | +0.35 |
| Services exports | 341.06 | 383.51 | +42.45 |
| Services imports | 178.31 | 194.95 | +16.64 |
Services are 46.7% of what India sells the world
The share is the part that tends to surprise. Of $820.93 billion in total exports, services were $383.51 billion — 46.7%. India is close to the point where it exports as much work as it does stuff.
This is not a story about one good year. It is a story about a composition that has been shifting for a long time and crossed a visible threshold in a year when the goods side happened to stall.
View data table
| Category | Change, US$ billion | Share of total growth |
|---|---|---|
| Services exports | +42.45 | 99.2% |
| Merchandise exports | +0.35 | 0.8% |
| Total exports | +42.80 | 100% |
What happens to the $94 billion that is left
An overall trade deficit is not the end of the account. Money also arrives that is not payment for anything exported this year — chiefly remittances from Indians working abroad, which the Reserve Bank reports reached a record $135.46 billion in 2024-25, up about 14%.
Once those flows are counted, India’s current account deficit for 2024-25 was $23.3 billion, or 0.6% of GDP — narrower than the $26.0 billion (0.7%) of 2023-24. The RBI attributes the improvement to higher net invisibles receipts, the category that holds both services and remittances.
These figures are on a different basis from the ones above and cannot be added to them. The Commerce Ministry counts goods as customs does, when they cross the border. The RBI counts them as the balance of payments does, on change of ownership, and reports the merchandise deficit for the same year at roughly $287 billion rather than $282.83 billion. Neither is wrong. They are answering slightly different questions, and a chart that mixed them would be measuring with two rulers.
The services numbers are estimates. The Commerce Ministry marks its monthly services figures as provisional and revises them. Goods figures come from customs records and are firmer. A revision of a few billion would not overturn the 99.2% finding — the gap between $42.45 billion and $0.35 billion is too wide — but it could move the decimal.
Two bases, two answers. As set out in section 04, customs-basis and balance-of-payments-basis figures differ for the same year and the same flow. Every chart on this page uses the customs basis, from one release. The RBI figures appear only in prose, and are labelled.
A surplus is not a virtue and a deficit is not a failure. A country running a goods deficit is buying things it wants, often capital equipment and energy it needs to grow. India’s widening merchandise deficit in 2024-25 sits alongside rising imports of exactly that kind. This dive is about composition — which half of the economy earns foreign exchange — not about whether the balance is good or bad.
Remittances are gross, not net. The $135.46 billion figure is inward private transfers. Money also leaves India in the other direction, and the balance-of-payments net figure is lower. Do not read the gross number as the amount by which remittances close the trade gap.
What this cannot tell you. Nothing here says who inside India earns the services income, or where. Services exports are concentrated in a small number of cities and a narrow slice of the workforce; the trade account is silent on distribution. It also says nothing about jobs: services exports grew 12.45% in a year, which is not the same as services employment growing at all.
- Ministry of Commerce & Industry — India’s Foreign Trade, FY2024-25 (April–March), PIB, 16 April 2025. All merchandise and services trade figures and all charts on this page.
- Reserve Bank of India — Developments in India’s Balance of Payments, 2024-25. Current account deficit ($23.3 billion, 0.6% of GDP), remittances ($135.46 billion), and the balance-of-payments-basis merchandise deficit cited in section 04.
Shares and growth contributions are ImpactMojo’s arithmetic on the published totals; the working is shown in each data table. The release’s own subtotals round to 0.01 in two places (imports minus exports gives 282.82 against a published 282.83); we quote the published figure.
ImpactMojo Data (2026). “Almost all of India’s export growth came from services.” ImpactMojo Data Dives. Retrieved from https://impactmojo.in/DataDives/all-the-growth-was-services.html
Have a dataset worth digging into?
Data Dives are independent investigations built from public data. If you know a number that deserves a closer look, tell us.
Pitch a Data Dive →