Carat$374 million to Australia: India's jewellery exports there rose 16%
India's gem and jewellery exports to Australia reached $374 million in FY2025-26, up 16%. Gold jewellery rose more than 28%, silver nearly 30%, coloured stones almost 36%.
§1The number, and its spread.
India's gem and jewellery exports to Australia reached $374 million in FY2025-26, a rise of 16%, on figures the Gem and Jewellery Export Promotion Council published in its own bulletin on 22 August. The growth is not evenly spread. Gold jewellery exports to the market rose more than 28%, silver jewellery by nearly 30% and coloured gemstones by almost 36%, all three well ahead of the 16% headline, which means the categories the council did not name grew slowly or fell.
The agreement underneath the number is the India-Australia Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement, signed on 2 April 2022 and in force since 29 December 2022. Australia gives zero-duty access across 100% of its tariff lines under it, with 98.3% duty-free immediately on entry into force, and gems and jewellery was one of the sectors the text named as a beneficiary. The agreement is in its fourth year and $374 million is what that access has produced so far. A second agreement, the India-New Zealand free trade agreement signed on 27 April 2026, is expected to do the same for that market once it enters into force, which it has not yet done.
§2Nine carat, not eighteen.
The delegation now in the market has been collecting the retail texture a tariff schedule does not carry. The council's mission is travelling Sydney and Melbourne and then Wellington and Auckland from 20 to 26 August under Vijay Mangukiya, its convener for international exhibitions, and it met Showcase Jewellers Group, an independents' buying group founded in 1981 with 126 members running 155 stores in Australia and further members in New Zealand and Vanuatu. The specification that came out of those meetings is the sort that decides whether an export line sells: 9-carat gold is the mainstream of Australian retail and 18-carat sits in the premium and fine tier.
Market access removes a tariff. It does not change what shoppers wear.
§3What the release leaves out.
What the bulletin does not carry is the base. It gives the 16% rise and the $374 million total but no prior-year figure, so FY2024-25 is implied at about $322 million on this desk's arithmetic rather than stated, and no monthly or quarterly path is published. It is also a single source: this is the council's own release on the council's own export data, with no corroboration from Australian import statistics, and this paper carries it as such. The next fixed point is the Jewellery Industry Fair in Sydney on 10 and 11 October, where the council is scheduled to run an India pavilion.
The interesting figure here is not 16% but the 9-carat line. Market access removes a tariff. It does not change what a country's shoppers wear, and an exporter geared to heavier domestic karatages holds a duty concession it cannot use until it builds to the local specification. Four years of zero-duty access have produced $374 million, a small line in India's export book and a real business for the firms inside it.
The week's work has been gathering the specification, which is what turns a trade agreement into orders.
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