India's PCB Trade www.escindia.in 2 info@escindia.com Table of Contents 1. Executive Summary ............................................................................................................... 3 2. Introduction & Objective ...................................................................................................... 4 3. India's Electronics Trade: The Backdrop ............................................................................... 5 4. The PCB Trade Flip: What Changed ...................................................................................... 5 5. Category-Wise Performance: Bare, Mounted and Populated PCBs .................................... 6 6. Country-Wise Trade Position ................................................................................................ 7 7. What's Driving the Growth ................................................................................................... 9 8. Barriers to Entry and Structural Constraints ...................................................................... 10 9. Opportunities ...................................................................................................................... 11 10. The Next Step: Climbing the Value Chain ......................................................................... 12 11. Policy Landscape ............................................................................................................... 12 12. Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 13 13. Sources............................................................................................................................... 14
India's PCB Trade www.escindia.in 3 info@escindia.com 1. Executive Summary For the first time India's printed circuit board (PCB) trade has turned from a deficit into a surplus. In the first five months of FY2026-27 (April to August 2026), India exported $2.29 billion worth of PCBs while importing $1.87 billion, a net surplus of roughly $420 million. The full-year deficit was $1.23 billion in FY2025-26 and $2.95 billion in FY2024-25. This reversal is real, but it is not even. It is entirely the work of two higher-value, assembly- stage categories, mounted PCBs and populated PCBs, both of which now export several times what they import. The most basic category, bare PCBs, is moving in the opposite direction: India still imports roughly twelve times what it exports in this segment, a gap barely changed from previous years. The flip is happening at the top of the value chain, not at its base. The buyer side of this story has two distinct chapters. In FY2025-26, exports to China alone rose roughly 34-fold, from about $45 million to $1.51 billion. This year, a second chapter has opened: Singapore has overtaken China as India's largest single PCB export market, buying $1.27 billion against China's $789 million in the same five months, driven substantially by Singapore's role as a regional hub for AI-server and data-centre hardware. On the supplier side, China remains dominant across every category, particularly for bare boards and the copper-clad laminate they are built from. This report keeps its focus on the PCB sector specifically: what changed, who is buying, who is still supplying inputs, why the growth is happening, what stands in its way, and what a realistic next step within the value chain looks like. $420M PCB trade surplus, FY2026-27(Apr-Aug) 12:1 Bare-PCB import-to-export ratio, largely unchanged $1.27B PCB exports to Singapore, now India's top buyer 34-fold Rise in PCB exports to China, FY2024-25 to FY2025-26
India's PCB Trade www.escindia.in 4 info@escindia.com 2. Introduction & Objective Introduction A printed circuit board (PCB) is the physical platform that holds and connects the components inside almost every electronic device in use today, from a smartphone or laptop to a server rack or an automotive control unit. PCB manufacturing sits close to the centre of any country's electronics manufacturing base, and its trade patterns are a reasonably direct proxy for how much of the assembly stage of electronics production actually happens on Indian soil, as distinct from further downstream, where a finished product is simply put together from imported sub-assemblies. India's trade in PCBs is tracked across three broad categories, each carrying its own HS code and reflecting a different stage of manufacture. Bare PCBs (HS 85340000) are the unpopulated board itself, etched and layered but with no components fitted. Mounted PCBs (HS 84733030) carry some components already fitted and are used mainly in computer hardware. Populated PCBs (HS 85177910) are fully assembled boards, ready to be installed into a finished product, and are used mainly in telecom and wireless equipment. This report uses these three category names consistently throughout, rather than referring to HS codes in the body of the text. Latest trade data through August 2026 shows a genuine, and on the numbers available unprecedented, shift in India's PCB trade balance: for the first time in the years this report draws on, exports have overtaken imports. That shift is not evenly spread. It is concentrated in the two higher- value, assembly-stage categories, mounted and populated PCBs, while the more basic bare-PCB category remains as import-dependent as it has been for years. It is also concentrated with two buyers, China and Singapore, for reasons that have little in common with each other. This report sets out to describe that shift precisely, in place of the more general impression that "India's PCB exports are growing," and to examine what is really underneath it. Objective The objective of this report is to give a precise, current account of India's PCB trade position, and to use that account to answer five specific questions. First, what exactly has changed in the trade balance, and over what period. Second, which of the three PCB categories, and which trading partners, are actually responsible for the change, since a shift concentrated in one or two categories and two buyer countries carries a different set of risks than a broad-based one would. Third, how much of the export growth reflects new domestic manufacturing capability, as against value that is largely passing through Indian assembly lines on its way to a finished, exported product. Fourth, what structural constraints, particularly around bare-board capacity and raw material supply, stand in the way of the trend continuing or broadening. Fifth, and finally, what a realistic next step within the PCB value chain looks like.
India's PCB Trade www.escindia.in 5 info@escindia.com 3. India's Electronics Trade: The Backdrop In FY2025-26, India's total electronics imports came to $116.1 billion against exports of $48.0 billion. In the first five months of FY2026-27, imports stood at $66.5 billion against exports of $26.7 billion, both figures already running well ahead of the equivalent period last year. China alone accounted for $49.2 billion, or roughly 42 percent, of India's total electronics imports in FY2025-26, a share that eased slightly to about 40 percent in the first five months of FY2026-27. Figure 1: India's total electronics trade with the world, FY2025-26 vs FY2026-27 (Apr-Aug). Within this much larger picture, PCBs are a small category, about 4 percent of India's total electronics exports in FY2025-26. What makes PCBs worth is not their size, but the direction they are moving in, within a sector where the overall trend has stayed stubbornly deficit-heavy. 4. The PCB Trade Flip: What Changed India's PCB trade balance has moved from a wide deficit to a modest surplus over three consecutive reporting periods. In FY2024-25, India imported $3,248.3 million worth of PCBs against exports of just $303.0 million, a deficit of $2,945.3 million. In FY2025-26, imports were roughly flat at $3,196.6 million while exports rose sixfold to $1,970.3 million, narrowing the deficit to $1,226.3 million. In the first five months of FY2026-27, the position flipped outright: imports of $1,865.2 million against exports of $2,287.7 million, a surplus of about $422 million. Table 1: India's PCB Trade, FY2024-25 to FY2026-27 (Apr-Aug), US$ million Period Imports (US$M) Exports (US$M) Net (US$M) FY2024-25 3,248.31 303.03 -2,945.28 FY2025-26 3,196.59 1,970.33 -1,226.26 FY2026-27 (Apr-Aug) 1,865.21 2,287.68 +422.47
India's PCB Trade www.escindia.in 6 info@escindia.com Two things are worth separating here. First, the pace of change: export value grew roughly sixfold between FY2024-25 and FY2025-26, and the five-month pace so far in FY2026-27 is faster still. Second, imports have not collapsed, they have simply grown more slowly than exports; India is not importing less, it is exporting a great deal more. 5. Category-Wise Performance: Bare, Mounted and Populated PCBs The headline flip is not spread evenly across India's three PCB categories. In the first five months of FY2026-27, mounted PCBs (used mainly in computer hardware) brought in $1,462.7 million in exports against $623.4 million in imports, a clear net-export position. Populated PCBs (mostly for telecom and wireless equipment) followed the same pattern: $746.4 million in exports against $287.3 million in imports. Bare PCBs told the opposite story: just $78.6 million in exports against $954.5 million in imports, a roughly twelve-to-one import-to-export ratio that has barely moved across the last three financial years. Figure 2: Imports vs. exports by PCB category, FY2026-27 (Apr-Aug), US$ million. Table 2: India's PCB Trade by Category, FY2024-25 to FY2026-27 (Apr-Aug), US$ million HS code/Category FY24-25 Imp. FY24-25 Exp. FY25-26 Imp. FY25-26 Exp. FY26-27* Imp. FY26-27* Exp. 85340000 – Bare PCBs 1,509.75 129.74 1,676.53 175.39 954.51 78.58 84733030 – Mounted PCBs 360.49 93.86 735.24 188.86 623.40 1,462.70 85177910 – Populated PCBs 1,378.07 79.43 784.82 1,606.08 287.30 746.40 Total 3,248.31 303.03 3,196.59 1,970.33 1,865.21 2,287.68 *FY2026-27 figures cover April-August only (5 months) and are not annualised.
India's PCB Trade www.escindia.in 7 info@escindia.com The pattern holds across all three periods: mounted and populated PCBs have grown export earnings far faster than import spend, while bare PCBs have shown no comparable movement. This is the real shape of India's PCB moment: strong, growing export capability at the assembly stage, sitting on top of continued, heavy dependence on imported bare boards and the raw materials they are built from. The bare-PCB segment in particular has proven resistant to change, despite several years of direct policy attention. 6. Country-Wise Trade Position 6.1 Where India's PCB Exports Are Going China's PCB imports from India kept growing this year, but its share of the total has fallen because Singapore has grown even faster. China bought $788.99 million worth of Indian PCBs in the first five months of FY2026-27, a pace that, if sustained, would comfortably exceed last year's full-year total of $1.51 billion. But because total PCB exports have grown faster still, China's share of India's PCB exports has fallen from over three-quarters (about 77 percent) in FY2025-26 to roughly 34 percent so far this year. Commerce ministry data put PCBs as the second-largest single item shipped from India to China in FY2025-26, behind only light naphtha, among the more unexpected entries on that list. The bigger story in the most recent data is Singapore. India's mounted-PCB exports to Singapore went from $13.6 million in FY2024-25, to $62.2 million in FY2025-26, to $1.27 billion in just the first five months of FY2026-27, making Singapore India's largest single PCB export market for the first time on record. This lines up with Singapore's own trade data: its non-oil domestic exports rose sharply in mid-2026, with electronics exports up over 100 percent year-on-year, driven substantially by demand tied to AI infrastructure. Some of this Singapore-bound volume may ultimately be re-exported onward from Singapore's logistics hub rather than consumed there. Figure 4: India's PCB export destinations, FY2024-25 to FY2026-27 (Apr-Aug), US$ million.
India's PCB Trade www.escindia.in 8 info@escindia.com China and Singapore together accounted for close to 90 percent of India's PCB exports in the first five months of FY2026-27. That is less risky than depending on a single country, but it is still a narrow base, tying the sector's fortunes to sourcing decisions in Beijing and to Singapore's own AI- investment cycle rather than to broad-based global demand. 6.2 Where India's PCB Imports Come From On the import side, China dominates bare and populated PCB supply to India, while a small number of other markets play more specific roles. In the first five months of FY2026-27, China supplied $427.4 million of India's $954.5 million in bare-PCB imports and $189.7 million of its $287.3 million in populated-PCB imports. Hong Kong is a significant secondary source of bare boards ($280.9 million), while Vietnam supplies a meaningful share of populated-PCB imports ($29.9 million). The most notable pattern is Singapore's two-way role. India imported $118.0 million of mounted PCBs from Singapore in the same five months, even as it exported $1.27 billion of mounted PCBs to Singapore, over ten times as much in the opposite direction. This is consistent with Singapore functioning as a regional hub, both a source of certain specialised or re-exported boards and, far more significantly, a destination for India's assembly-stage output bound for AI-hardware supply chains. A further $679 million in bare, mounted and populated PCB imports combined came from source countries outside the four tracked individually here, a reminder that China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Vietnam are the primary, but not the only, suppliers. Figure 5: China vs. the next-largest source, by PCB category, FY2026-27 (Apr-Aug).
India's PCB Trade www.escindia.in 9 info@escindia.com 7. What's Driving the Growth A genuine capacity build, catalysed by global supply-chain shifts Apple's expansion of its India operations is widely cited as an important catalyst behind India's assembly-stage gains, encouraging global suppliers and contract manufacturers to scale up local operations that are now, in turn, capable of supplying China and other markets. Chinese customs data, tracked by the research firm Sinolytics, gives a precise sense of scale: under HS code 851779, which covers telecom-equipment components including PCBs, China's exports of these goods to India grew a modest 12.0 percent in the first half of 2026 (from $5.54 billion to $6.20 billion), while China's imports of the same category from India surged 651.2 percent in the same period (from $124 million to $932 million). A separate official noted that part of this is simply smaller Indian manufacturers graduating from assembling other companies' products to manufacturing and exporting boards of their own, in small but growing quantities. A Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology official offered a straightforward explanation for why China is the main buyer: “The simpler designs would find demand in mass markets like China, where production units may not find it cost-effective to manufacture the same product.” In other words, India is not out-competing China on technology, it is picking up standardised, lower-layer- count board work that has become relatively more expensive for China's own, more advanced production lines to bother with. A new, AI-driven demand pool in Singapore The Singapore surge looks different in character from the China story. It is not primarily about global brands shifting assembly out of China (the “China+1” narrative used elsewhere in India's electronics sector); it is about India plugging into a new pool of demand tied to AI-server and data-centre buildouts, for which Singapore is a regional hub. This is a demand-side opening rather than a supply- chain diversion, and its durability likely depends on the pace of AI infrastructure investment. The same AI cycle, cutting the other way: raw materials The same AI-infrastructure investment cycle that is pulling Singapore's demand for India's mounted PCBs is also the primary driver of the copper-clad-laminate price shock squeezing Indian manufacturers' input costs. Global demand for advanced circuit boards used in AI servers has cascaded upstream to the copper foil and electronic-grade glass cloth used in copper-clad laminate (CCL), the base material every PCB is built on. India's PCB sector is, in effect, riding the same global wave on both the demand side and the cost side at once. A necessary caveat: assembly value is not the same as domestic value addition It helps to be clear about what "PCB exports" really means here. MeitY data shows India's electronics manufacturing overall still runs at only 18 to 20 percent domestic value addition. In plain terms: most of what India assembles and exports still relies on parts and materials bought from other countries. This matters for mounted and populated PCBs specifically. Making these boards means fitting components onto them, and many of those components are imported. So, some part of these export
India's PCB Trade www.escindia.in 10 info@escindia.com earnings is not new value India created; it is value that simply passed through an Indian factory on its way to being sold abroad. It is a sign that a meaningful part of India's PCB assembly still rests on boards designed and made elsewhere. China, meanwhile, continues to pull further ahead at the advanced end: the China Printed Circuit Association reports that the country's exports of PCBs above four layers grew 47.8 percent year-on-year in the first half of 2026. 8. Barriers to Entry and Structural Constraints 9. Opportunities 10. The Next Step: Climbing the Value Chain 11. Policy Landscape 12. Conclusion 13. Sources
