India now imports more cotton than it exports
India's cotton exports and imports, million 480-lb bales, USDA marketing years 2010/11 to 2025/26 (2025/26 is an estimate).
- 1. India now has more working-age people than China
- 2. India's UPI now handles 86% as many payments as Visa
- 3. Indian students now outnumber Chinese students in the US
- 4. India's GitHub developers outnumber China's, Brazil's and Japan's combined
- 5. India's stock market grew 23-fold since 2000
- 6. Indian phone users now average 25.7 GB a month
- 7. India's metro network quadrupled in a decade
- 8. India now ships over a third of world rice exports
- 9. India went from 1% to 37% of Russia's crude sales
- 10. India's wild tigers have more than doubled since 2006
- 11. Two in three rickshaws sold in India are electric
- 12. Indians now file more patents at home than Germans
- 13. India published more science papers than Germany and Britain combined
- 14. India now holds more foreign reserves than Saudi Arabia
- 15. Open defecation in India fell from 73% to 7%
- 16. India's sun and wind now outproduce Germany's
- 17. India's landlines have nearly doubled since 2020
- 18. India's debit card payments have fallen by three quarters
- 19. India climbed from tenth to fifth in patent filings
- 20. 13 countries made India their biggest medicine supplier
- 21. India now imports more cotton than it exports
- 22. South Asia nearly doubled its share of the world economy
India's cotton exports, 2011/12 to 2025/26. It fell from second place and 24% of world exports to sixth and 2.4%.
India's cotton imports in 2025/26, up from 0.2m in 2010/11. Production slipped from 28.7m bales in 2011/12 to 23.8m.
seasons since 2022/23 in which India's imports beat its exports (2022/23, 2024/25, 2025/26), after 12 straight seasons as a net exporter.
the numbers & method
| Year | Exports (m) | Imports (m) |
|---|---|---|
| 2010 | 5.0 | 0.2 |
| 2011 | 11.1 | 0.6 |
| 2012 | 7.8 | 1.2 |
| 2013 | 9.3 | 0.7 |
| 2014 | 4.2 | 1.2 |
| 2015 | 5.8 | 1.1 |
| 2016 | 4.6 | 2.7 |
| 2017 | 5.2 | 1.7 |
| 2018 | 3.5 | 1.8 |
| 2019 | 3.2 | 2.3 |
| 2020 | 6.2 | 0.8 |
| 2021 | 3.7 | 1.0 |
| 2022 | 1.1 | 1.7 |
| 2023 | 2.3 | 0.9 |
| 2024 | 1.3 | 3.0 |
| 2025 | 1.1 | 5.2 |
Claim types Fact · Estimate
USDA FAS, PSD Online, Cotton (data as of Oct 2026; earlier seasons in the Dec 2025 release), India exports (attribute 88) and imports (57), 1,000 480-lb bales, marketing years August to July (2011 = 2011/12), read from USDA PSD via the progrss vault (GUIDELINES §4.11, usda-psd passes value_checks). Chart values are the USDA figures divided by 1,000. Exports, 1,000 bales, 2010/11 to 2025/26: 5,000; 11,080; 7,761; 9,261; 4,199; 5,764; 4,550; 5,182; 3,521; 3,200; 6,189; 3,743; 1,099; 2,310; 1,325; 1,104. Imports: 200; 600; 1,187; 675; 1,226; 1,072; 2,736; 1,677; 1,800; 2,280; 844; 1,000; 1,727; 885; 3,041; 5,171. World shares and ranks are progrss calculations: India's exports divided by the sum of all countries' exports in PSD (34.9m bales in 2010/11, 46.0m in 2011/12, 45.9m in 2025/26 (USDA cotton circular, November 2026)): 24.1% and second place in 2011/12, 2.4% and sixth place in 2025/26 (third in 2019/20 to 2021/22, 5th in 2024/25). Production (attribute 28): 28,700 in 2011/12, 23,800 in 2025/26. India's imports beat its exports in 2022/23, 2024/25 and 2025/26; exports beat imports in every season from 2010/11 to 2021/22 and in 2023/24. 2025/26 is a USDA estimate (Estimate); the 2026/27 forecast is not used. USDA's season totals are revised each month. No cause is claimed in the chart: the data do not show whether falling output, domestic mill demand or trade policy drove the change. Uzbekistan, another former major exporter, also fell out (2,650 to 5 thousand bales, 2010/11 to 2025/26); it is not charted. The progrss pre-check tool cannot score USDA marketing-year series (non-annual periods), so coverage, rank and still-moving were checked by hand: 124 countries in every year, India still below its 2011 level in 2025/26. The November 2026 circular confirms India's values; its 2026/27 forecast (not charted) still shows imports (3.3m bales) ahead of exports (1.5m). Sixth place in 2025/26 is by 1,000 bales over Turkey, so a monthly revision could make it seventh.
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