At least in the oil sector, the global health emergency caused by coronavirus is coming to India’s advantage. While the severe demand squeeze due to the pandemic helped India save on oil imports, low global crude prices could help it further in reducing sharply the import bill.
Declining consistently since April, India’s oil imports fell about 29 per cent (YoY) to around 13.44 million tonnes in June, the lowest since October 2011.
In value terms, the June oil imports stood at $4.93 billion (Rs 37,341.70 crore), down 55.29 per cent in the dollar terms from $11.03 billion (Rs 76,586.73 crore) in June 2019.
In April, it fell to 16.55 million tonnes, a 16 per cent YoY decline, from 17.28 million tonnes reported earlier. In May, crude oil imports fell 22.6 per cent, the biggest drop since at least 2005, to 14.61 million tonnes against the year-ago month.
