Scale Up Investment To Bolster Manufacturing In India: FM Sitharaman's Message To India Inc

Reiterating the focus on domestic production-linked activities, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said there's no reason behind hesitation in investing to bolster manufacturing in India.

Speaking at an event organised by the Indian Foundation for Quality Management, the Union Finance Minister aasked India Inc. to collaboratively work with the centre to increase skilled youth availability ready for employment.

“Today I have a basket of things on which the government has delivered…The industry wants the demand to be visible on the horizon… The horizon keeps shifting, I understand, because of global challenges,” Sitharaman said. 

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The centre on September 3 introduced nex-gen GST gramework ever since its implementation back in 2017 to ease compliance and reap benefits of resilience displayed in the Indian economy.

The latest GST reforms will come into effect from September 22.

The tax measures announced in the Budget for FY2026 in February, such as the increase in the personal-income threshold for paying income taxes were also undertaken by the government to boost consumption demand in the country. 

Sitharaman in her address called for the industry to engage with the government on a year-round basis and not just before the Budget. She said that the industry has had a genuine grievance that after recruiting somebody because they are qualified, companies are spending almost six to eight months getting them ready for their jobs.

“The industry should very quickly look at bridging the human resources insufficiencies, inadequate training… That element has to be done by all of us,” the FM added while responding to a question by Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran on her key asks from the industry. 

Earlier, the FM had said that healthy corporate balance sheets were not being utilised in capacity expansion. 

Private investment has lagged behind government capex spending. The government’s capital expenditure for April-July period of FY26 stood at 30.9 per cent of the FY26 Budget estimates rising by 32.7 per cent compared to last year, according to the Controller General of Accounts (CGA) data.

Speaking about the significant contribution of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) to India's gross domestic product (GDP), Sitharaman said that the government has ensured that the Small Industries Development Bank of India is physically present in MSME clusters.

“Even in this day and age when we are talking about digital banking, we insisted that SIDBI would be present in each of these clusters,” Sitharaman added.