How AI memory hunger is creeping into India’s inflation and import bill | Today’s news

When it comes to India’s import account, one way to identify price pressures is to see the difference between value and volume growth. Through January 2026, year-over-year growth in both volume and value of electronic integrated circuits used as memory—a group that includes memory chips such as DRAM, static random access memory (SRAM), flash memory, and read-only memory, among others—was approaching. That has changed since February, when value growth shot to 110%, while volume growth was up 18%. By June, this divergence had widened further: the value of imports was up 314% year-on-year, compared to a 60% increase in volume.

“It can only indicate two things: first, price changes, or second, we are importing higher-end chips,” said Anubhuti Sahay, head of India economic research at Standard Chartered Bank. “Our view is that most of that is likely to be driven by price increases because it’s something that’s a global theme.”