# How much money did Indians send abroad under RBI's LRS?

> Travel dominates RBI's purpose table, but it is broader than holidays. Family support, education and investment make this a more complicated ledger.

**RBI LRS outward remittances reached $29 billion in FY2025-26**

In FY2025-26, resident Indians sent $28.98 billion, roughly ₹2.56 lakh crore at the year's average exchange rate, abroad under RBI's Liberalised Remittance Scheme. That was 8.7% below the FY2023-24 peak of $31.7 billion. Travel was the largest reported purpose at $16.44 billion, or 56.7% of the total. But the Travel label contains education, pilgrimage and credit-card settlements, not just holidays. Other large chunks went to supporting relatives abroad, paying for studies and buying foreign stocks or property. The data shows that when total outflows fell, investment in equities and property actually rose. RBI's own footnotes warn that the Others row mixes journal subscriptions with student-loan repayments, so the table can mislead if read as a simple story about leisure travel or capital flight.

## Is the latest LRS total a new record?

No. Resident Indians remitted $28.98 billion, roughly ₹2.56 lakh crore at the average FY2025-26 exchange rate, under RBI's Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS). That was 8.7% below the $31.74 billion peak, roughly ₹2.63 lakh crore at the average FY2023-24 exchange rate, recorded two years earlier. Travel remained the largest official purpose at $16.44 billion, or 56.7% of the total.

RBI publishes the source table in US$ crore, and 100 US$ crore equals $1 billion. The parenthetical rupee figures are approximate conversions: we multiply each fiscal year's dollar amount by the average monthly INR-per-dollar rate for that same year. We retain dollars on the charts because that is the source unit, while the rupee equivalents help an Indian reader feel the scale.

This is also not every dollar that left India. It covers gross outward remittances reported by authorised dealer banks for resident individuals using LRS. It excludes companies, merchandise imports, government payments and many other cross-border flows. Within that boundary, the annual line rises from $0.98 billion in FY2009-10, breaks upward after RBI widened coverage in 2015, dips during the pandemic, peaks in FY2023-24 and eases for two years. The latest reading is a high plateau, not a new acceleration.

## Why does the reported total jump after 2015?

Because the rules and the measurement changed together. The annual ceiling per resident individual began at $25,000 in 2004, rose to $200,000, fell to $75,000 during the 2013 external-pressure episode, moved back to $125,000 in 2014 and reached $250,000 in May 2015. The path was not a steady liberalisation. RBI tightened the valve when the rupee was under stress and opened it again later.

May 2015 matters for a second reason. RBI also brought private travel, business travel and several other current-account facilities under the common LRS limit. Part of the jump after that date is therefore a wider administrative perimeter. A growth rate drawn across 2015 would mix changes in actual remitting with changes in what the table counted.

The ceiling chart should not be read as utilisation. A $250,000 legal maximum tells us what one resident could remit, not what the typical resident did, how many people used LRS or how close anyone came to the limit. This workbook contains amounts, not remitter counts.

## Which purposes reshaped LRS after 2015?

Travel became the largest purpose in FY2016-17 and stayed there except in FY2020-21, when Studies Abroad briefly moved ahead. The pandemic shut borders and compressed travel payments, while education obligations did not disappear in the same way. That one crossing is useful because it proves the purpose lines respond differently to shocks; they are not one interchangeable block called overseas spending.

Travel's return was rapid. It rose from $3.24 billion in FY2020-21 to $17.01 billion, roughly ₹1.41 lakh crore at that year's average exchange rate, at the FY2023-24 peak. Studies Abroad followed a different timetable, reaching its own maximum of $5.17 billion in FY2021-22 before falling to $2.31 billion by FY2025-26. Maintenance of relatives and gifts peaked later, in FY2023-24.

## What does the full monthly record reveal?

The small-multiple chart opens the part of the workbook that annual lines compress. It covers the full April 2008 to April 2026 release: 2,170 possible monthly cells across ten top-level purposes, of which 2,119 contain published numbers and 51 are literal dashes. Each panel is scaled to its own range. That is why tiny Donations and Medical Treatment remain visible instead of becoming flat lines beneath Travel.

Read shape within a panel, not height across panels. Travel shows the clearest pandemic break and rebound. Studies Abroad has a different, earlier crest. Equity or debt investment finishes near its series high, while gifts and maintenance of relatives retreat from theirs. The small categories look jagged because a modest dollar change can be large relative to a tiny base.

The early gaps are part of the evidence. Travel, maintenance of relatives, Medical Treatment and Studies Abroad are unpublished for the first 12 months, and Donations has three dashes. The chart leaves those cells empty rather than inventing zeroes. Together with the Travel-split chart, which uses all ten numeric child values published for March and April 2026, every numeric cell in the workbook now feeds at least one visual.

## Where did the $29 billion go in FY2025-26?

Five purposes accounted for 95% of the total. Travel led at $16.44 billion, roughly ₹1.45 lakh crore. Maintenance of close relatives was $3.54 billion, roughly ₹31,300 crore; investment in equity or debt was $2.65 billion, roughly ₹23,400 crore; gifts were $2.59 billion, roughly ₹22,900 crore; and Studies Abroad was $2.31 billion, roughly ₹20,400 crore. Their shares were 56.7%, 12.2%, 9.2%, 9.0% and 8.0%, respectively.

The remaining five together formed only about 5%. Deposits were $0.75 billion, property purchases $0.53 billion, Others $0.09 billion, medical treatment $0.06 billion and donations $0.01 billion. The chart keeps all ten because small categories still define the accounting boundary. Dropping them would make the headline total impossible to reconstruct.

Small does not mean simple. RBI's bottom note says Others includes journal subscriptions, maintenance of investments abroad, student-loan repayments and credit-card payments. A subscription, a loan instalment and a card settlement are not versions of the same behaviour. The honest conclusion is that Others is a residual bucket whose internal movement cannot be assigned one motive.

## What changed after the FY2023-24 peak?

The headline total fell by $2.76 billion, but that net figure hides a larger churn. Categories that declined lost about $4.18 billion between them. Equity or debt investment and property purchases added about $1.43 billion, offsetting roughly one-third of those falls.

Studies Abroad recorded the largest decline, about $1.17 billion. Maintenance of close relatives fell by $1.07 billion, gifts by $0.99 billion and Travel by $0.57 billion. In the other direction, equity or debt investment rose by $1.14 billion and property purchases by $0.29 billion. Deposits fell slightly, so even the asset-building group was not uniform.

The ranked-change chart answers what moved, not why. Exchange rates, university payment schedules, visa conditions, asset prices, tax collection and household decisions could all play a role. The workbook has no variable that can separate them.

## Is every purpose below its own peak?

No. The overall LRS record occurred in FY2023-24, but each purpose has its own high-water mark. Equity or debt investment and property purchases set new series records in FY2025-26, so both appear at 100% of their own peak. Travel remained close to its record at 96.7%, even after two softer years.

The middle of the chart tells a different story. Maintenance of relatives stood at 76.7% of its own peak; deposits at 74.5%; gifts at 72.5%; and medical treatment at 72.1%. Donations were at 54.3%, though their dollar base is tiny. Studies Abroad had fallen to 44.7% of its FY2021-22 maximum, while Others was only 26.9% of its FY2022-23 high.

This comparison uses all 17 complete fiscal years for every top-level purpose. It is more demanding than comparing everything with FY2023-24 because it does not assume the total's peak was also the relevant peak for each component. It still describes distance, not cause or permanence.

## Are Indians using more LRS money to invest abroad?

Yes, within RBI's declared-purpose categories. Equity or debt investment reached a record $2.65 billion, roughly ₹23,400 crore at the average FY2025-26 exchange rate. That was 56% more than the previous year and 76% more than at the overall LRS peak in FY2023-24.

The category had ranked fifth in each of the previous three financial years. In FY2025-26 it moved to third, behind only Travel and maintenance of relatives, and narrowly passed both Gifts and Studies Abroad. Property purchases also set a record at $0.53 billion after rising 64% in one year. Deposits did not follow the same path: at $0.75 billion, they remained about one-quarter below their FY2022-23 peak.

Together, these three clearly asset-building purposes rose from $2.67 billion, or 8.4% of all LRS remittances, in FY2023-24 to $3.93 billion, roughly ₹34,800 crore or 13.6%, in FY2025-26. That is a genuine change in the mix, but not a measure of overseas wealth or capital flight. The workbook has no investor count, destination, security type, sale, return flow or portfolio valuation, and gross money remitted for investment is not the same as net assets accumulated abroad.

## What does RBI's Travel category actually contain?

The workbook publishes five Travel children only for March and April 2026. Together those months contain $2.25 billion of Travel remittances. Other travel accounts for $1.31 billion, or 58.1%; travel for education accounts for $0.89 billion, or 39.5%. Business, pilgrimage and medical travel share the remaining 2.4%.

Even the largest child is mixed. RBI says Other travel includes holidays and some international credit-card settlements. It cannot be renamed leisure. The education share also changes how the headline should be understood: in the only complete split available, nearly two dollars in every five classified as Travel were attached to education-related travel.

RBI draws a specific boundary. Fees, hostel expenses and related payments sit under Travel for education when the person undertakes travel for study; education services purchased without undertaking travel sit under Studies Abroad. The same distinction applies to medical travel and Medical Treatment. Two months cannot represent a full year or older history, but they are enough to rule out calling the entire Travel total a holiday bill.

## Did more foreign departures explain the rise in Travel remittances?

Not by themselves. Indian-national departures rose from about 21.9 million in 2016 to 30.9 million in 2024. Over the same calendar-year window, LRS Travel remittances rose from $2.27 billion to $16.71 billion.

Index both series to 100 in 2016 and the difference becomes visible without mixing units. By 2024 the departures index reached 141, while the remittance index reached 735. More border crossings are part of the context, but their growth was nowhere near large enough to mirror the money series.

The gap does not identify what filled it. Payment size, payment mix, repeat trips, exchange rates and RBI's Travel classification could all matter. Departures count movements, not unique people or leisure holidays. Dividing one series by the other would manufacture a per-trip spending estimate from mismatched denominators.

## Did TCS cause the two large spikes in 2023?

The chart cannot prove that, but the sequence deserves attention. Monthly LRS outflows reached $3.89 billion in June 2023 and $3.49 billion in September. They then fell to $2.18 billion in October. June came before the higher Tax Collected at Source rate was originally due to begin on July 1; September came before the deferred October 1 start.

From October, the TCS rate for most purposes other than education or medical treatment rose from 5% to 20% above the applicable Rs 7 lakh threshold. TCS is generally creditable against final tax liability, so the economic issue is the upfront cash-flow cost and timing, not automatically an extra final tax.

The two peaks are consistent with some payments being advanced before announced dates. They are not a controlled experiment. Monthly aggregates cannot identify remitters, distinguish planned payments from rescheduled ones or hold travel seasons and other rules constant. The chart supports a careful timing observation, not a permanent TCS effect.

## How should we read these numbers?

We audited the workbook's only sheet from top to bottom: 217 consecutive monthly rows from April 2008 to April 2026 and all 15 published value fields. That is 3,255 possible value cells. Of these, 2,129 contain numbers and 1,126 contain literal dashes. Ten fields are top-level purposes. Five are nested Travel children, and 215 of their 217 months are dashes because the detailed split appears only in March and April 2026.

The headline total always sums the ten top-level purposes. The five Travel children are already inside Travel and are never added again. Raw values are in US$ crore and are divided by 100 to obtain US$ billion. The workbook-derived and RBI-displayed FY2025-26 totals both round to $28.98 billion; their tiny difference comes from displayed-source rounding. For rupee context, the average monthly exchange rate was about ₹88.4 per US dollar in FY2025-26 and ₹82.8 in FY2023-24. These produce approximate equivalents, not transaction-level rupee totals.

Dashes remain missing values, not invented zeroes. Travel, maintenance of close relatives, medical treatment and Studies Abroad each have dashes for the first 12 months, while Donations has three. This is why the complete fiscal-year comparison begins in FY2009-10. The monthly small-multiple chart starts at the workbook's first row in April 2008 and preserves those early gaps.

The table has no field for the number, income, age or state of remitters; no destination or recipient; and no refund, return-flow or motive field. Values are nominal US dollars, so they are not inflation-adjusted and exchange-rate movements can affect comparisons. The 2015 coverage break limits long-run growth claims. The departures series comes independently from the Ministry of Tourism and Bureau of Immigration, uses calendar years and is indexed only to compare shapes. This is a carefully bounded purpose ledger, not a profile of the people behind the payments.

## Sources

- RBI Bulletin Table 36: Liberalised Remittance Scheme outward remittances by purpose, monthly and annual.
- RBI Master Direction on LRS for ceiling revisions.
- Bureau of Immigration Indian-national departures from Ministry of Tourism Table 3.1.1.
- Ministry of Finance press release dated June 28, 2023 for TCS rate change.
- Dollar figures are converted from US dollar crore in the RBI source. Approximate rupee equivalents use the average monthly INR-per-US-dollar rate over the corresponding financial year from FRED series EXINUS.

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Source: [This Indian Life](https://thisindianlife.today/articles/rbi-lrs-outward-remittances-by-purpose/) · Updated 2026-07-16. Licensed CC BY 4.0. Please cite as "This Indian Life — https://thisindianlife.today".