Table Of Contents
Ask ten people how much gold India imports, and you will get ten different answers.
Some will quote a tonnage.
Some will quote a figure in dollars.
Both can be correct in the same year, which is exactly why the honest answer needs a little unpacking.
At our trade desk, we assess gold the same way we assess any other consignment.
There is a quantity, a landed cost, a duty line, and a route.
The headline number that newspapers print is only the start of that story.
So let us go through it properly, from the importer’s side of the table.
The Honest Answer Has Two Halves: Tonnes And Rupees
In the 2025-26 financial year, India imported about 721 tonnes of gold.
The official figure put out by the Commerce Ministry was 721.03 tonnes.
In value terms, that same gold cost the country about 71.98 billion US dollars.
That was a record in rupee and dollar terms.
Here is the catch that trips up most readers.
The tonnage actually fell that year, by close to five per cent, while the value rose by roughly twenty-four per cent.
Both statements are true at once.
India bought less metal but paid far more for it, because the price of gold climbed sharply over the year.
This is why “how much” is a genuinely two-part question.
If you mean weight, the answer is around 700-800 tonnes in a normal year.
If you mean money, the answer has been climbing fast and is now near the 72 billion dollar mark.
A Clear Year By Year Picture
The pattern over recent years shows the split between weight and value very clearly.
The table below compares the two side by side.
| Financial Year | Volume (Tonnes) | Value (US Dollars) |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-23 | 678.3 | 35 billion |
| 2023-24 | 795.2 | 45.54 billion |
| 2024-25 | 757.09 | 58 billion |
| 2025-26 | 721.03 | 71.98 billion |
Read the columns separately, and the story jumps out.
Volume has wobbled between roughly 678 and 795 tonnes.
Value, in the same period, has more than doubled.
A practical note for anyone building a costing model.
Always state which number you are using and the year.
A tonnage from one year and a value from another will quietly wreck your assumptions.
One more honest caveat.
Official trade figures are sometimes revised after publication.
In early 2025, the statistics office corrected a counting error related to special economic zones that had briefly double-counted some gold.
The numbers you see today are the cleaned-up ones, but it is a reminder to treat any single early print with a little caution.
Why Does The Value Keep Rising While The Tonnage Does Not
The simple driver is price. Gold has been expensive and getting more so.
The average import price of gold rose from about 76,617 US dollars per kilogram in 2024-25 to about 99,825 US dollars per kilogram in 2025-26.
That is the engine behind the record value.
At the retail end, domestic gold was hovering around 1,56,000 rupees for ten grams in Delhi during that period, inclusive of all taxes.
For an importer, the lesson is that your working capital requirement is now tied to a moving and rising number.
The same 100 kilograms costs you far more to clear today than it did two years ago, even before any change in duties.
Gold is also behaving more like a financial haven than a simple commodity.
When global risk rises, Indian demand for gold tends to rise with it, which keeps imports firm even when prices are high.
Where India’s Gold Actually Comes From
This part surprises people.
India’s gold does not mostly arrive from the great mining nations.
It arrives from refining and trading hubs.
In 2025-26, Switzerland was the largest single source, with a share of around 40 per cent.
Imports from Switzerland came to about 24.27 billion US dollars, up by a little over eleven per cent on the previous year.
The United Arab Emirates was next, with a share of more than sixteen per cent.
South Africa came in at around ten per cent.
Switzerland mines almost no gold of its own.
It sits at the top of the list because it is the world’s leading gold-refining centre, where metal from many countries is purified and re-exported.
The UAE story is similar but with a twist.
The Emirates neither mines gold in any meaningful quantity nor refines it in any meaningful quantity.
Their large share has been driven mostly by a trade-deal advantage, which brought a great deal of gold through Dubai to enter India at a lower duty.
We will come back to that route shortly, because it has changed dramatically.
For context, India bought gold from forty-eight different countries in 2023-24.
The country remains the world’s second largest gold consumer, behind only China, and most of that gold feeds the jewellery trade.
The Big Change For Importers: Duty Is Back At Fifteen Per Cent
This is the single most important update for anyone clearing gold right now, so read it carefully.
On 13 May 2026, the government raised the effective import duty on gold and silver bullion to fifteen per cent.
The change was notified the day before and took effect immediately.
The new structure is ten per cent Basic Customs Duty plus a five per cent Agriculture Infrastructure and Development Cess, which together give the fifteen per cent headline.
This reverses a deep cut made in the 2024 Budget.
For about two years, from mid-2024 until May 2026, the effective duty had been only six per cent, comprising five per cent Basic Customs Duty and one per cent cess.
In plain terms, the cost of clearing gold has more than doubled at the duty line in a single step.
The move was aimed at protecting foreign exchange reserves and the rupee, and it followed a public call from the Prime Minister for citizens to ease off bullion buying for a year.
In addition to the customs duty, an Integrated GST of three per cent applies.
It is charged on the assessable value plus the customs duty, not on the value alone, so it adds to the higher base.
If you closed a deal in April 2026 and are clearing it now, your numbers are out of date.
This is not a small revision.
A Worked Example Of The Landed Cost
Numbers make this real.
The example below is illustrative and uses sample rates for clarity.
Always confirm the live tariff value, exchange rate, and exact duty split with your customs broker before you commit.
Assume an international price of 100,000 US dollars per kilogram and an exchange rate of 86 rupees to the dollar.
That gives an assessable value of 86,00,000 rupees per kilogram.
Under the new regime, the duty stacks up as follows.
Basic Customs Duty at ten per cent is 8,60,000 rupees.
The cess at five per cent is 4,30,000 rupees.
Together, the customs duty is 12,90,000 rupees.
IGST at three per cent is then charged on 98,90,000 rupees, which is the assessable value plus the customs duty.
That comes to 2,96,700 rupees.
The total landed cost is therefore about 1,01,86,700 rupees per kilogram, before any financing, insurance margin, or local handling.
To see how much the duty hike alone has added, compare it against the old six per cent regime on the same metal.
| Cost Line (Per Kilogram) | Old Regime (Six Per Cent) | New Regime (Fifteen Per Cent) |
|---|---|---|
| Assessable value | 86,00,000 | 86,00,000 |
| Customs duty | 5,16,000 | 12,90,000 |
| IGST at three per cent | 2,73,480 | 2,96,700 |
| Total landed cost | 93,89,480 | 1,01,86,700 |
The difference is close to 7,97,000 rupees per kilogram.
On a modest consignment of fifty kilograms, that is nearly four crore rupees of extra cost from the duty change alone.
This is why every importer needs to recost open positions immediately.
Did you know? Switzerland is consistently India’s biggest source of gold, yet it has almost no gold mines of its own. It tops the list purely because it is the world’s busiest gold-refining hub. Much of the metal that lands in India was dug up elsewhere, then refined in Swiss refineries before being shipped on.
The India UAE CEPA Route, And Why It Has Gone Quiet
For two years, the most talked-about gold route was the one through the UAE.
Under the India-UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, which came into force on 1 May 2022, India offered a Tariff Rate Quota for gold originating in the Emirates.
Within that quota, the duty was set one percentage point below the standard rate that applied to the rest of the world.
The quota was designed to grow over time, starting near 120 tonnes a year and rising towards 200 tonnes by 2027.
When the standard duty was six per cent, gold under this quota entered at five per cent, which made it very attractive to large jewellers.
That one point of saving sounds small.
On expensive metal, in large volumes, it was worth a great deal, and imports through Dubai surged.
The picture in 2026 is very different.
Two things have changed at once.
First, the quota route has become tangled in court cases, and importers have largely stopped using it.
Industry sources in June 2026 described the UAE preferential route as effectively closed.
Gold is still arriving from the UAE, but outside the trade deal, and buyers have shifted weight back towards Switzerland and other suppliers.
Second, the duty hike has reduced the exercise’s overall appeal.
With the standard duty now at fifteen per cent, the maths that made Dubai so popular has shifted, and overall gold imports softened in the weeks after the change.
The government did extend the validity of existing quota authorisations to 30 June 2026, so the framework is not dead.
However, for the moment, do not build a sourcing plan around the CEPA gold quota. Confirm the current position before you rely on it.
Who Is Actually Allowed To Import Gold?
This is where many newcomers waste time because the rules tightened sharply in 2025.
Since 19 May 2025, gold of 99.5 per cent purity or higher in unwrought or semi-manufactured form has been in the restricted category.
It used to be freely importable. It is no longer.
Today, commercial gold can be brought in through a short list of channels.
RBI– and DGFT-nominated agencies, which include certain banks and public sector bodies such as MMTC, form the traditional route.
Qualified jewellers approved by the Financial Services Authority can import through the India International Bullion Exchange in GIFT City, Gujarat.
Holders of the UAE quota licence import through that same exchange, taking delivery into approved vaults in special economic zones.
Refiners licensed by the Bureau of Indian Standards can bring in gold dore, the semi-pure mining product, under an actual-user condition.
A valid Import Export Code from the DGFT is mandatory for every one of these commercial routes.
There is no commercial import without it.
The bullion exchange route works through Bullion Depository Receipts, which represent physical gold held in a vault, rather than through the old consignment model run by agencies.
For a genuine jewellery business, that is the cleaner long-term path.
One item on the usual lists does not belong to importers at all, so let us group it honestly.
The duty-free baggage allowance, where a man may carry twenty grams and a woman forty grams after six months abroad, is a personal traveller concession.
It has nothing to do with commercial sourcing, and you cannot build a business on suitcases.
If you are reading this as a trader, ignore it.
What This Means If You Are Planning To Import
Pull the threads together, and a clear operating picture emerges.
Plan your costings around the fifteen per cent duty, plus three per cent IGST on the duty-inclusive value, until an official notification says otherwise.
Expect your working capital needs to be high because both metal prices and duties are elevated simultaneously.
Do not assume the UAE quota route is open.
Treat it as suspended for now and confirm before relying on it.
Get your channel right first.
For most jewellery businesses today, that means qualified jeweller status and the bullion exchange, with the Import Export Code in place before anything else.
Moreover, watch the policy line closely.
Gold duty in India has now swung from fifteen per cent down to six, and back up to fifteen, within two years.
It can move again, and each move changes your landed cost overnight.
In closing
Gold remains one of the most fascinating commodities India trades, precisely because it sits at the intersection of culture, finance, and policy.
The numbers are big, the rules shift often, and the route you choose can make or break a margin.
We hope this has given you a clear, grounded answer to a question that sounds simple but rarely is.
The real figure is two figures, the duty is fresh news, and the famous UAE route is having a quiet spell.
If you found this useful, do stay a while and explore more of our writing on trade, duty, and sourcing.
We enjoy taking these knotty topics apart and laying them out plainly, and there is plenty more on the site to dig into.
Thank you for reading, and happy trading.
About Author
