Millet Export & Import — India’s Place in the Global Trade

India grows roughly 40% of the world’s millets and is the largest producer on earth. But production leadership hasn’t yet translated into an equally large share of the global trade in millets — which is exactly what recent government export pushes are trying to change.

The numbers

In 2023–24, India exported about 1,46,300 metric tonnes of millets worth USD 70.89 million, per APEDA (Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority) trade data. In 2024–25, volumes actually fell to roughly 89,165 tonnes worth about USD 37 million — a reminder that this trade is thin and lumpy enough that a handful of large shipments (or their absence) move the annual total considerably, and that the post-International-Year-of-Millets export bump has not (yet) become a steady upward trend.

That volatility sits against a USD 100 million export target for 2025 that India set around the UN’s International Year of Millets (2023), and APEDA’s longer-run ambition to grow annual millet exports towards ₹2,000 crore (roughly USD 240 million). Meanwhile domestic production keeps climbing regardless of export performance — 180.15 lakh tonnes in 2024–25, about 4.43 lakh tonnes more than the year before — so the gap between what India grows and what it exports is, if anything, widening.

Zoom out to the global millet market, and the picture is more consistently upward: estimates vary by research firm (a natural feature of a market this fragmented), but figures cluster around USD 12–16 billion in 2024–25, with most forecasts projecting roughly 10–13% CAGR through the early 2030s, driven by gluten-free/health-food demand and climate-resilience narratives around the crop. Asia-Pacific dominates overall volume, but India’s own domestic market is cited as growing faster than the global average — one estimate puts India’s millet-market CAGR near 15.8%, outpacing the global figure.

Who buys Indian millets

The destination market is concentrated in a handful of countries, led by the Indian diaspora and countries with existing sorghum/pearl-millet food or feed use:

Market	Why they buy
United Arab Emirates	Diaspora demand, re-export hub for the wider Gulf
Nepal	Land border trade, shared food culture (bajra, kodo)
Saudi Arabia	Diaspora demand, growing health-food retail
United States	Health-food/gluten-free market, diaspora demand

Beyond these top four, smaller volumes move to other Gulf states, parts of Africa (sorghum for food and feed use), and Southeast Asia.

HS codes — how millets are classified for trade

Millets fall under HS Chapter 10 (Cereals), Heading 1008:

1008.21 — millet seed, for sowing/planting
1008.29 — millet, other (this is the bulk-commodity code most raw bajra and jowar shipments use)
1008.90 — other cereals, used for some small-millet and processed-grain shipments

Correct HS classification matters directly for export incentive eligibility, customs duty treatment at the destination, and which trade-agreement preferences (if any) apply.

What an exporter needs

IEC (Importer-Exporter Code) from DGFT — the basic registration required to export anything from India.
APEDA registration (RCMC) — Registration-Cum-Membership Certificate, required for APEDA-scheduled products, which include cereal preparations.
FSSAI export/manufacturing licence — food safety compliance is checked both by Indian authorities and, on arrival, by the importing country’s own food-safety agency.
Phytosanitary certificate — issued by India’s Plant Quarantine authorities, required by most importing countries for raw grain shipments.
Destination-market compliance — e.g. FDA registration for US-bound food shipments, or GCC standards for Gulf markets. Requirements differ by country and by whether the product is raw grain or a processed/packaged product.
Quality parameters commonly specified in export contracts: moisture content (typically below 12–14%), foreign matter/admixture limits, aflatoxin limits, and pesticide-residue limits matching the importing country’s MRLs (maximum residue limits) — often stricter than Indian domestic standards.

Import side

India is a negligible importer of millets for consumption — as the world’s largest producer, there’s little commercial reason to import raw grain. Any import activity tends to be limited to specialty/breeding seed stock for research institutions rather than food-grain trade.