India’s Crude Imports From Russia Surge By 400 Per Cent In Current Fiscal

India’s crude imports from Russia appear to be unstoppable. Already, in the current fiscal year, they have surged by 400 per cent according to a report in Asia Nikkei. The total value of crude imports was valued at $37.71 billion, up from $7.71 billion in the previous fiscal year (first ten months until January). 

As per the report, India has been exporting a lot of petroleum products as well. Between April 2022 and January 2023, $78.58 billion worth of products were exported from India.

For the first ten months of the last fiscal year, the value of the exports stood at $50.77 billion. As per observers, India has been using its diplomatic leverage to avail steep discounts from Russia. 

According to S&P Global Commodity Insights, quoted in the report, Russia made up for merely 2.2 per cent of India’s crude supply. In November 2022, however, India was receiving 1 million barrels per day from Russia (almost 20 per cent). 

In December, it increased to 1.2 million barrels per day, and close to 1.3 million barrels in the first two weeks of January. 

India has already ushered a rupee-trade mechanism with Russia, given the sanctions against Moscow after Ukraine’s invasion last year. The hawks in Washington, however, have been voicing their concerns against India’s crude imports from Russia.

Even George Soros, in his recent attack on Prime Minister Modi, questioned the oil imports. 

The Russia-Ukraine crisis added to the inflation woes across the world, complemented, at the worst possible time, by the Covid-zero lockdowns in China and the resulting supply chain crisis. Global inflation, driven by high oil prices, dented Western economies. 

Between May 2020 to April 2022, consumer price inflation (measured as an annual per cent change in the consumer price index) went from 0.1 per cent to 8.3 per cent in the US, 0.5 to 9.0 in the UK, 0.6 to 7.4 in Germany, 0.4 to 4.8 in France, -0.2 to 6.1 in Italy, and collectively, from 0.1 per cent to 7.4 per cent for the entire Eurozone.