In 2024, goods worth 10.8 billion euros were imported from India, nearly tripling the import value compared to four years earlier. Especially between 2020 and 2022, goods imports increased. One third of the import value of goods from India consists of so-called quasi-transit.
In quasi-transit, goods from India enter the Netherlands and are then exported again without a resident of the Netherlands becoming the owner of the goods. Such trade flows yield relatively little added value for the Netherlands.
Of the imports excluding quasi-transit, 3.2 percent of imports from outside the European Union came from India. In 2020, this was only 2.4 percent.
Of the 10.8 billion euros of goods from India, 54.7 percent comes from the three most imported goods. These are phones (2.7 billion euros), petroleum products such as gasoline (2.6 billion euros), and clothing (0.6 billion euros).
Nearly three quarters of the value of phones from India is re-exported. For petroleum products and clothing, this is about 9 percent and 26 percent of the value, respectively.
In 2024, services worth 6.6 billion euros were imported from India, more than 66 percent higher than in 2020. More than a quarter of services from Asia come from India. This makes India the Netherlands largest Asian service supplier.
The top three most imported services account for just over three quarters of the total import value of services. Imports of services consist of 31.4 percent computer services (2.1 billion euros), including the purchase of custom software and web hosting. Next are professional and management consulting services such as administrative services (1.5 billion) and technical, trade-related, and other business services such as technical consulting services (1.5 billion euros). India was the main Asian supplier of these services.
In 2024, the Netherlands was the second largest importer of goods and services from India within the EU, with a share of 16.1 percent of total EU imports from India. Only Germany imports more. For goods imports, the Netherlands is even the largest importer in the EU.
While the value of Dutch imports of Indian goods grew between 2022 and 2024, that of Germany, Italy, France, and Belgium declined. As a service importer, the Netherlands has been the third largest importer of Indian services within the EU since 2021, after Ireland overtook the Netherlands.
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