India's Trade With the UAE Reached US$101.25 Billion in 2025-26, Within Four Years of the CEPA Taking Effect, and About 4.3 Million Indians Live in the Emirates

India and the United Arab Emirates traded US$101.25 billion of goods in the financial year 2025-26, which ran from April 2025 to March 2026. The figure comes from a Ministry of Commerce and Industry release of 28 September 2026 on the 14th meeting of the two countries’ investment task force in Mumbai, and the Ministry of External Affairs’ June 2026 commercial brief ranks the UAE as India’s third-largest trading partner and second-largest export destination.

The trade rests on the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), a free trade agreement signed in February 2022 and in force since 1 May 2022. Around it sit a rupee-dirham settlement framework, UAE investment in India, an Indian community of about 4.3 million, oil storage arrangements, a shipping corridor plan and a Hindu temple in Abu Dhabi. Each gets a section below, with the date of every figure.

What the CEPA has delivered so far

The Press Information Bureau (PIB), the government’s release service, said on 18 August 2026 that the agreement’s negotiations took 88 days, and called it India’s first full free trade agreement in a decade. Under it, 97 per cent of UAE tariff lines, covering 99 per cent of Indian exports, get preferential access, and Indian service providers gain access to about 111 sub-sectors. (A tariff line is one product code in a customs schedule.)

The Commerce Ministry’s release of 28 July 2026 counts 4.45 lakh (445,000) certificates of origin issued under the agreement since 1 May 2022. Each is a document showing that a shipment qualifies for the lower tariff. The same release says the number of product lines India exported to the UAE rose from 7,546 in 2021-22 to 8,053 in 2025-26, with exports across them worth US$37.3 billion. The national picture is in India’s record US$863 billion in exports.

The 18 August note puts total trade at US$100.06 billion in 2024-25, up 19.6 per cent, and calls the UAE India’s largest single-country export market among its trade agreement partners. India’s exports to the UAE in 2025-26 were US$37.36 billion in the 28 July table. In calendar 2025, non-oil trade reached US$76.2 billion, according to the 28 September release.

That release does not say whether the non-oil figure leaves out precious metals, and the target the two commerce ministers reaffirmed on 29 August 2025 is US$100 billion of non-oil, non-precious-metals trade by 2030. In the joint statement of 19 January 2026, the two leaders decided to double total trade to US$200 billion by 2032.

Growth between the last two financial years was slower than in the one before. By these figures total trade rose about 1.2 per cent from 2024-25 to 2025-26, and the remainder of the 2025-26 total, about US$63.9 billion, was India’s imports (tuput’s subtraction). The June brief lists petroleum products, gems and jewellery, food, textiles, chemicals, electronics and engineering goods in the trade basket. India’s agreement with the United Kingdom, in force since 15 July 2026, is covered in its own article.

Paying in rupees and dirhams

On 15 July 2023 the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Central Bank of the UAE signed two memorandums in Abu Dhabi. The first set up a Local Currency Settlement System, which lets exporters and importers invoice and pay in rupees and dirhams. The RBI’s release says it covers all current account transactions and permitted capital account transactions, and would cut the cost and time of remittances from Indians living in the UAE.

The second memorandum covers payment systems. It commits the two banks to link India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) with the UAE’s Instant Payment Platform, link the RuPay and UAESWITCH card switches, and explore a link between their financial messaging systems. A joint statement dated 15 February 2024 lists an agreement on interlinking UPI with AANI, the name the UAE side uses for its instant payment platform in that text, and another on linking RuPay with JAYWAN. JAYWAN is the UAE’s domestic card scheme, which the statement says uses the RuPay technology that India’s National Payments Corporation shares with the UAE central bank.

On shop payments, the Finance Ministry’s release of 24 August 2026 lists the UAE among 11 countries where UPI is operational. UPI’s wider reach is covered in India’s digital public infrastructure abroad.

How far the rest has gone depends on which official text is read. A PIB backgrounder of 15 May 2026 says local currency settlement is in place and lets trade and remittances be settled in rupees and dirhams. The June 2026 brief records the July 2023 memorandum and describes work on joining UPI with AANI, and RuPay with JAYWAN, as ongoing. At the Mumbai meeting on 28 September 2026, co-chaired by the Commerce and Industry Minister and the managing director of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), the two sides reviewed progress by the central banks on local currency settlement, payment and messaging systems and central bank digital currencies, and agreed to support timely implementation. None of the official pages tuput opened gives a volume of rupee-dirham settlement.

UAE money in India, and Indian money in the UAE

The June brief says cumulative foreign direct investment from the UAE into India from April 2000 to March 2026 was US$25.59 billion, citing the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), and ranks the UAE as the seventh-largest overseas investor in India. It names real estate, infrastructure, energy, private equity and financial services as the main areas. A Bilateral Investment Treaty, signed in February 2024, took effect on 31 August 2024.

The PIB list of outcomes for the Prime Minister’s visit to the UAE on 15 May 2026 records three investment commitments. Emirates NBD is to invest US$3 billion in RBL Bank, International Holding Company US$1 billion in Sammaan Capital, and ADIA and India’s National Infrastructure and Investment Fund are to explore up to US$1 billion in infrastructure. The 28 September release welcomed the Emirates NBD stake, which it describes as a majority holding, and noted a joint investment intent of US$11.5 billion for an integrated aluminium complex in Odisha. It adds that an Invest India office in the UAE is expected to open before the end of 2026, and that Mashreq Bank, First Abu Dhabi Bank and Abu Dhabi National Insurance Company have opened branches in GIFT City, India’s international financial centre in Gujarat.

No official total for Indian investment in the UAE appears in the pages tuput opened. The June brief names Indian companies with UAE operations, among them the Taj Group, Ashok Leyland, Mahindra and Dabur, and says L&T, Essar and others have won significant contracts. The 19 January 2026 joint statement also records that IIT Delhi and IIM Ahmedabad have opened offshore campuses in the UAE.

About 4.3 million Indians, and the money they send home

The June brief puts the Indian community in the UAE at about 4.3 million and calls it the largest expatriate community in the country. The Indian embassy in Abu Dhabi’s page, dated June 2026, gives the same number without dating the count.

The RBI’s sixth survey of inward remittances, published in its bulletin of 19 March 2025, covers 2023-24. It puts the UAE second among source countries with 19.2 per cent of India’s remittances, up from 18 per cent in 2020-21. The United States was first at 27.7 per cent, and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries together supplied 38 per cent of the total. The bulletin gives total inward remittances of US$118.7 billion for 2023-24.

Oil, gas and a storage arrangement

The UAE was India’s fourth-largest source of crude oil, third-largest source of LNG and largest supplier of LPG in 2024-25, and the second-largest export destination for India’s finished petroleum products, says the PIB backgrounder of 15 May 2026, which cites the Petroleum Ministry’s annual report. The backgrounder adds that the UAE is the only country taking part in India’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve programme.

The arrangement began with an agreement dated 25 January 2017 between the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) and Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserves Limited (ISPRL), the government company that holds India’s emergency crude, to store 5.86 million barrels of ADNOC crude in underground facilities at Mangalore, Karnataka.

Two newer steps are on record. The 19 January 2026 joint statement welcomes a 10-year LNG supply agreement between Hindustan Petroleum and ADNOC Gas for 0.5 million tonnes a year from 2028. The PIB list of 15 May 2026 describes a memorandum between ISPRL and ADNOC covering potential ADNOC crude storage of up to 30 million barrels in India’s reserves, including through facilities at Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh and new ones at Chandikol in Odisha. It also covers potential storage in Fujairah, in the UAE, as part of the Indian reserve, and potential LNG and LPG storage work in India. A separate agreement between Indian Oil and ADNOC Gas is to explore a long-term LPG purchase contract. The list’s wording is “potential” and “explore”, and the pages tuput opened state no volumes delivered under these steps.

The corridor plan, and what officials say now

On 9 September 2023, on the margins of the G20 summit in Delhi, Saudi Arabia, the European Union, India, the UAE, France, Germany, Italy and the United States set out the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) in a memorandum of understanding. The text describes two corridors, an east one linking India to the Arabian Gulf and a northern one linking the Gulf to Europe, and a railway that would give a ship-to-rail transit network between India, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel and Europe. Cables for electricity and digital links and a pipe for clean hydrogen exports are to run along the route.

The memorandum says it “does not create rights or obligations under international law” and that the participants intended to meet within 60 days to agree an action plan with timetables. India and the UAE then signed the first agreement under the initiative, an intergovernmental framework for a logistics platform with digital services and supply chain handling for general cargo, bulk, containers and liquid bulk, listed in the joint statement of 15 February 2024.

On 19 January 2026 the two leaders reaffirmed their commitment to IMEC, which the statement says “would be of great strategic importance.” None of the official texts tuput opened reports a finished section of railway.

The temple in Abu Dhabi

The BAPS Hindu Mandir was inaugurated on 14 February 2024 by the Prime Minister, Arab News reported that day. The temple was built by BAPS, a Hindu organisation headquartered in Gujarat, on about 27 acres of land donated by the UAE government. Its pink sandstone came from Rajasthan, was carved by artisans in India and was assembled in the UAE.

The joint statement of 15 February 2024 records the Prime Minister’s thanks to the UAE President for granting the land, and describes the temple as a celebration of UAE-India friendship and of the UAE’s commitment to harmony, tolerance and peaceful coexistence. Gulf News reported on 16 February 2026 that the temple had received more than four million visitors in two years, and quoted the UAE’s Minister of Tolerance and Coexistence calling it “a powerful symbol of shared human values.”