India and Saudi Arabia Traded US$41.07 Billion in 2025-26 Under a Strategic Partnership Council Now Running Four Committees, and the Haj Quota for Indian Pilgrims Is 1,75,025

India and Saudi Arabia did US$41.07 billion of trade in the financial year 2025-26, which ran from April 2025 to March 2026. The figure is in the Indian embassy in Riyadh’s economic and commercial brief of October 2026, which cites the official trade statistics of the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) and the Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCIS) and ranks Saudi Arabia as India’s fifth-largest trading partner.

The two governments steer the relationship through a Strategic Partnership Council set up in October 2019. Around it sit crude oil and LPG (cooking gas) supplies, investment on both sides, a community of about 2.75 million Indians in the Kingdom, joint military exercises, a place in the India-Middle East-Europe corridor plan and an annual Haj quota for Indian pilgrims. Each gets a section below, with the date of every figure.

A council set up in 2019 and widened in 2025

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) brief of 31 May 2026 dates diplomatic relations to 1947 and says the 2010 Riyadh Declaration lifted them to a strategic partnership. The Strategic Partnership Council Agreement was signed in Riyadh during the Prime Minister’s visit of 28 to 29 October 2019. The joint statement of 29 October 2019 records both sides’ satisfaction at the council’s establishment.

The embassy brief describes the original design. Two sub-committees sat under the council: one on political, security, social and cultural cooperation, headed by the foreign ministers, and one on economy and investment, headed by India’s Commerce and Industry Minister and the Saudi Minister of Energy. Eight joint working groups, four under each, covered topics from defence to agriculture and energy.

The first leaders’ meeting took place in September 2023, during the Crown Prince and Prime Minister’s visit to India for the G20 summit. The second was in Jeddah on 22 April 2025. The joint statement of that day says the leaders signed the minutes and welcomed an expansion to four ministerial committees by adding two. The MEA brief names them: Political, Consular and Security Cooperation; Defence Cooperation; Economy, Energy, Investment and Technology; and Tourism and Cultural Cooperation. The embassy brief adds a new working group on trade.

The MEA counts nearly 35 ministerial and senior-official interactions in 2025 alone. The newest ministerial visit on the embassy’s list is by India’s Minister of State for External Affairs, on 5 to 8 September 2026. The date of the third council meeting is still to be agreed, the April 2025 statement says.

US$41.07 billion of trade, with textiles and medicines growing

Of the 2025-26 total, India’s imports from Saudi Arabia were US$30.79 billion and its exports US$10.28 billion, per the embassy brief. India’s main exports there are engineering goods, basmati rice, vehicles and equipment, chemicals, textiles and medicines. Textile and allied exports were US$531.34 million, and pharmaceutical exports US$186.45 million, which the brief says grew about 12.3 per cent a year compounded over five years. Imports are mainly crude oil, LPG, fertilisers, chemicals and plastics.

On rank the Saudi side is reported differently. The MEA brief of May 2026 calls India Saudi Arabia’s second-largest trade partner, and the embassy’s October brief calls it the third-largest. Total trade was 2.55 per cent below 2024-25 and below the 2022-23 peak of US$52.76 billion, and India’s exports fell 12.55 per cent from US$11.76 billion. The brief offers no reason for the drop. In April 2025 the two sides said they wanted to start negotiations on a free trade agreement between India and the Gulf Cooperation Council, the six-nation Gulf bloc.

35.88 million tonnes of crude, and a reserve and refinery agenda

India bought 35.88 million tonnes of crude oil from Saudi Arabia in 2025-26, up from 33.14 million tonnes in 2024-25, the embassy brief says. That was 13.81 per cent of India’s crude imports, which totalled 259.79 million tonnes. LPG imports from Saudi Arabia were 2.94 million tonnes, 13.08 per cent of the total, worth US$1,712.15 million.

Saudi Arabia’s share was larger four years earlier: 17.67 per cent of crude in 2021-22 and 20.84 per cent of LPG, when India’s total crude imports were 220.03 million tonnes. For April to June 2026 the brief lists 5.93 million tonnes of crude (9.93 per cent) and 0.36 million tonnes of LPG (9.34 per cent) and gives no explanation.

The April 2025 joint statement lists areas for further work: crude and LPG supply, collaboration in India’s strategic reserve programme, refining and petrochemical projects, a joint study on an electricity link between the two grids and green hydrogen. The same statement says the leaders noted an agreement in their investment task force to collaborate on establishing two refineries. It gives no site, size or date. India’s own hydrogen programme is in the National Green Hydrogen Mission article.

Saudi money in India, Indian money in the Kingdom

The embassy brief names the Public Investment Fund’s US$1.5 billion for a 2.32 per cent stake in Reliance Jio Platforms and US$1.3 billion for 2.04 per cent of Reliance Retail Ventures. It credits the Saudi group Al Fanar with about US$700 million in wind and solar projects in Gujarat and Rajasthan, and says SABIC, the Saudi chemicals company, has put over US$100 million into a technology centre in Bengaluru.

On totals, two official documents give different numbers. The MEA brief says Saudi investment in India, counting the Public Investment Fund, other Saudi companies and the Saudi-backed Vision Fund, is about US$10 billion. The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) table of country-wise equity inflows records US$3,315.83 million from Saudi Arabia between January 2000 and March 2026, 20th among source countries. Neither page explains the gap. The MEA brief also records the February 2019 announcement that the Kingdom would invest about US$100 billion in India, and the two sides’ High Level Task Force on Investment has met twice, in July 2024 and April 2025.

Indian investment in Saudi Arabia is documented at US$3.21 billion in 2024 across about 6,300 Indian companies registered there, as joint ventures or wholly owned units. The embassy brief names L&T, Tata Motors, Wipro, TCS and Tech Mahindra as having a strong presence. The April 2025 statement affirms a wish to finish Bilateral Investment Treaty negotiations at the earliest.

2.75 million Indians, and the money they send home

The MEA’s diaspora table, dated January 2026, counts 2,750,551 overseas Indians in Saudi Arabia, of whom 2,747,551 are non-resident Indians and 3,000 are people of Indian origin. The May 2026 brief puts the community at about 2.74 million and calls it “a living bridge between the two countries.” The Indian community in the UAE is covered in a separate article.

The Reserve Bank of India’s sixth remittance survey, published on 19 March 2025, covers 2023-24, when India received US$118.7 billion in inward remittances. Saudi Arabia’s share in the survey’s bank-channel table was 6.7 per cent, against 5.1 per cent in 2020-21 and 11.6 per cent in 2016-17. Among money transfer operators, the bulletin says, 92.7 per cent of transactions from Saudi Arabia were digital in 2023-24, the highest share the survey found for any country. It links the rising weight of advanced economies in the total to a shift toward skilled migration.

Labour terms are covered by a 2014 agreement on domestic workers and a 2016 agreement on general-category workers, the MEA says. The two countries’ joint committee on labour cooperation met in April and October 2025.

Defence and security: staff talks, exercises and a joint venture

The April 2025 joint statement calls defence ties a key pillar of the partnership. The MEA brief lists the steps. A Minister of State for Defence visited Riyadh in February 2024, the first Indian ministerial defence visit there in over 12 years, and an agreement was signed for ammunition exports worth US$225 million. The embassy brief names Munitions India Limited as the contractor and the figure as artillery ammunition. India’s wider export figures are in the defence exports article.

The navies held the Al Mohed Al Hindi exercise in 2021 and 2023, and the armies the first EX-SADA TANSEEQ in Rajasthan in 2024. The 7th Joint Committee on Defence Cooperation met in New Delhi in August 2025, and the first Navy Staff Talks and Army Staff Talks were held in 2025. Saudi Arabia’s Chief of General Staff made the first official visit by a holder of that post to India in December 2025. The Saudi naval chief attended the IONS conclave in Visakhapatnam in February 2026, and the broader naval picture is in the Indian Ocean article.

At the World Defence Show in Riyadh in February 2026 India’s Minister of State for Defence inaugurated an India Pavilion, which the MEA brief calls a first for the show. The embassy brief adds that a joint venture between the Indian firm MKU and Saudi Arabia’s Sondos Advanced Industry was announced there.

On security, All India Radio reported that the third meeting of the bilateral Security Working Group took place in Riyadh on 28 January 2026. Both sides condemned terrorism in all forms, including cross-border terrorism, and reviewed work on terror financing.

Saudi Arabia in the corridor plan

On 9 September 2023 Saudi Arabia, the European Union, India, the UAE, France, Germany, Italy and the United States signed a memorandum on the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC). The text describes an east corridor linking India to the Arabian Gulf and a northern one linking the Gulf to Europe. It includes a railway that would carry goods between India, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel and Europe, with electricity and data cables and a clean hydrogen pipe along the route. The memorandum says it creates no rights or obligations under international law. The wider corridor picture is in the trade corridors article.

In April 2025 India and Saudi Arabia restated their commitment to railway and port links, data connectivity and grid interconnection under the plan. They welcomed progress under a memorandum on electrical interconnection, green hydrogen and supply chains signed in October 2023. The pages opened for this article report no completed railway section.

Haj: a quota of 1,75,025

The MEA brief says the annual Haj quota for Indian pilgrims is 1,75,025 (175,025) and that an average of 1.5 million Indians a year perform Umrah, the shorter pilgrimage. India’s Haj mobile app, the e-MASIHA health service and pre-tagging of luggage are among its digital steps. A bilateral agreement defines the quota. The Ministry of Minority Affairs’ release of 14 January 2025 says the Haj 2025 agreement was signed in Jeddah on 13 January 2025 with that figure earmarked for India.

The Ministry’s release of 18 June 2026 says about 1.75 lakh Indians performed Haj in 2026, on 400 flights, with 62,500 pilgrims travelling between Makkah and Madinah by high-speed railway and about 10,500 taking a new 20-day Short Haj Package. It says the Saudi Ministry of Hajj and Umrah gave the Indian Haj Mission two Labbaytum Awards in the category “Best Haj Coordination and Communication,” a first.

For 2027 the release of 22 June 2026 expects the 70:30 split to continue, with 1,22,518 seats for the Haj Committee of India and 52,507 for private operators, and says the government will try to raise the quota. The 18 June release says the bilateral agreement on Haj-2027 is to be signed on 7 November 2026.