India’s gold import surge, which had set records just months ago, has come to a sharp and sudden halt. In a note dated April 16, Jefferies’ Christopher Wood in his widely-read GREED & FEAR report flagged that India’s gold imports — which had hit a record US$14.7 billion in October 2025 and remained elevated at US$12.1 billion in January 2026 — have since collapsed to just US$3.1 billion in March 2026. The chart, sourced from Bloomberg, shows the March figure as one of the sharpest single-month declines in India’s gold import history, coming off what was effectively a multi-month retail-driven buying frenzy.
Wood described gold as having “entered a healthy consolidation period after the retail driven buying frenzy late last year and early this year, be it in India, China or the US.” The observation places India’s import collapse in a broader global context of fading retail momentum after a sharp run-up in gold prices globally. With gold now trading above $3,000 per ounce driven by safe-haven demand from the ongoing US-Iran war, prices have risen far enough to suppress discretionary buying by price-sensitive Indian consumers and traders.
The demand destruction at the import level is not, however, purely a price story. The India Bullion and Jewellers Association (IBJA) has flagged a critical regulatory bottleneck that is compounding the import slowdown. In a statement today, IBJA said importers are currently awaiting a clarification from the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) on concessional import duty, and this regulatory uncertainty has resulted in a GST blockage at the importer level. Until clarity is provided, importers are reluctant to commit to fresh orders.
More strikingly, IBJA confirmed that there have been no imports of gold ‘dore’ — the unrefined gold bar form used by domestic refineries — for three months running. Dore imports are a key input for India’s domestic gold refining industry, which processes raw gold into bullion and jewellery-grade material. A three-month halt in dore imports is a significant supply-side signal, suggesting that not just consumer demand but the entire upstream pipeline has effectively frozen pending policy clarity.
The combination of factors — a price-driven retail slowdown, the DGFT-GST regulatory uncertainty, and the dore import halt — paints a picture of an industry in a sharp but likely temporary air pocket. Gold prices remain structurally supported by global geopolitical tensions, and India’s underlying demand for gold as savings, jewellery and investment remains among the strongest in the world. Once the DGFT clarification is issued and the GST blockage clears, a resumption of imports is expected — though at more normalised levels than the record months of October 2025 and January 2026.
For gold financiers like Muthoot Finance and Manappuram Finance, the collateral value of pledged gold remains high even as fresh import demand has softened — meaning their loan books are well-supported. The import-side weakness is more directly relevant to jewellery manufacturers, bullion traders and domestic refiners who depend on a steady supply of incoming metal.