2 Petroleum products are the biggest item driving Russian imports
CMIE data shows that the single biggest reason for surge in Russian imports is a jump in petroleum products. India imported petroleum products worth $15.6 billion from Russia between April and September 2022. This number was just $3.7 billion in fiscal year 2021-22. For April-september 2021, this number was just $1.6 billion. Monthly data on Russia’s share in India’s crude petroleum imports throws more light on how big the jump has been and continues to increase. CMIE data shows that for the period between April 2013 (the earliest period for which this data is available) and February 2022 (when the Ukraine war started) Russian crude petroleum imports had a share of 5% in India’s total crude petroleum imports in only two months. This number increased to 6.1% in April 2022 and increased almost consistently to reach 22.6% in September 2022, the latest period for which this data is available. In fact, data from the Ministry of Commerce trade database shows that Russia has been the second largest source of crude oil imports in value terms in three out of six months for which data is available for this fiscal.