PM Modi on foreign travel:

At a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi has appealed to Indians not to travel abroad for at least a year and to give up on foreign weddings, official data shows that foreign spending by Indian tourists has fallen in the last two years.

In fact, analysis of data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) shows that the real growth in dollars leaving the country has come from high-net-worth individuals (HNIs) investing in movable and immovable foreign assets, rather than those going on holidays or getting married in foreign locations.

Addressing a meeting in Telangana’s Secunderabad on Sunday, May 10, 2025, Mr. Modi presented a seven-point list of suggestions to the people of India to help the Indian economy and government during the ongoing West Asian crisis.

“The culture of having weddings abroad, traveling abroad and holidaying abroad is becoming widespread among the middle class. We must decide that we should postpone traveling abroad for at least a year during this crisis,” Mr. Modi said as one of his suggestions.

RBI data on expenditure under the Liberalized Remittance Scheme (LRS), the only official avenue through which Indian individuals can spend abroad, shows a total of $26.4 billion was spent under this scheme in the first 11 months of 2025-26 (April 2025 to February 2026). This is 2.3% lower than the amount spent in the same period in 2024-25.

Of this, foreign travel spending was $15.3 billion, the largest category, but this amount was 3.1% lower in April 2025-February 2026 compared to the same period in the previous year; This was 1% lower than in the April 2024-February 2025 period.

Similarly, expenditure on gifts sent abroad decreased by 12.7% and 19.1% in the first 11 months of 2025-26 and 2024-25, respectively.

On the other hand, Indians’ foreign debt and equity investments increased by approximately 59% to 2.2 billion dollars in the April 2025-February 2026 period. For context, this figure was $621 million in the first 11 months of 2021-22.

Similarly, the amount spent on purchasing real estate from abroad increased by over 76% to 490 million dollars in the first 11 months of 2025-26. This figure was $96.7 million in the same period of 2021-22.