India’s bauxite import sees Y-o-Y growth in 2019

According to the global export-import data, India’s estimated imports of bauxite climbed 27.13% from 2018 and 47.53% from 2017 to stand at 2.39 million tonnes in 2019. The country has been following an upward pattern for bauxite import. Guinea was the top supplier of the ore to India in 2019.

Guinea, which has been racing past many countries to become the key bauxite exporter globally, exported an estimated 1.5 million tonnes of bauxite to India last year, an increase of 133.78% year-on-year. Other key bauxite exporting countries namely, Brazil, Trinidad and Tobago, Sierra Leone and China supplied lesser volumes of bauxite to India: 506317 tonnes, 161797 tonnes, 56050 tonnes, and 52989 tonnes respectively.

According to recent estimates, India imported about 1.62 million tonnes of bauxite in 2017, which increased by 16 per cent to total at 1.88 million tonnes in 2018. The country’s estimated bauxite imports rose 27.13% from 2018 and 47.53% from 2017 to 2.39 million tonnes in 2019. The import volume is estimated to stand at 2 million tonnes in 2020, down 16.32 per cent from 2019, but up 6.38 per cent from 2018.

In 2017 and 2018, India’s imported bauxite worth US$59.2 million and US$63.2 million, respectively. In 2019, the estimated value from bauxite imports stood at US$36.5 million, down 42.25 per cent from 2018. The total value of import is estimated to reach US$16.8 million in 2020, down 53.97 per cent from 2019 and 73.42 per cent in 2018.