India may have missed turning current account surplus after 12 years due to all-time low crude oil prices

India’s hunger for imported energy might have cost India a chance to swing its current account into surplus in the January-March 2020 quarter, for the first time in 12 years. The government had expected that a sharper fall in India’s imports in the last quarter of the last financial year 2019-20 would help generate a current account surplus for India. The dramatic fall in trade activity had seen both imports and exports falling substantially, bringing India this once-in-a-blue-moon opportunity. However, India imported a huge amount of crude oil in March to take advantage of low crude oil prices and to fill strategic reserves to full capacity, preventing imports from falling in line with the suppressed domestic economic activity.