Budget 2026 must prioritise job creation, support to exports: FICCI's Industry Survey

New Delhi: The Union Budget must accord priority to measures to boost job creation and a stronger support to exports, given the rising global trade frictions, India Inc said in a FICCI Survey released on Thursday, with a majority of respondents expressing confidence in the country's growth prospects.

About half of the participants expect GDP growth to remain in the 7-8 per cent range in FY 2026-27, while 80 per cent expressed optimism on the country's growth prospects, reaffirming faith in India's medium-term fundamentals despite persistent global uncertainties.

The survey was undertaken between the end of December 2025 and mid-January 2026. The results are based on responses from around 100 companies across a range of sectors.


"Given the rising global trade frictions, uncertainty on global tariffs and non-tariff barriers such as CBAM and deforestation-related regulations, the expectations of support to exports in the Union Budget are clearly evident. To strengthen India's export performance and integration into global value chains, respondents emphasised the need for streamlining trade facilitation and customs processes, reducing logistics and port-related bottlenecks, and strengthening export incentives and refund mechanisms.

The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) is a tool used by the European Union (EU) to put a fair price on carbon emitted during the production of carbon-intensive goods like steel, aluminium and cement that are entering the 27-nation bloc, and to encourage cleaner industrial production in non-EU countries.

The industry respondents called for the Union Budget to increase allocations under RoDTEP (Remission of Duties and Taxes on Exported Products) to improve export competitiveness, observing that they look forward to announcements related to reforms in SEZ policy and further rationalisation of customs tariffs in the budget.

Sharing their budget wish-list, the industry respondents covered in the survey also called for measures to simplify direct tax compliance, boost digitisation, provide certainty, faster dispute resolution and litigation management.

Based on the survey, three macroeconomic priorities clearly emerge for the Union Budget 2026-27: job creation, a sustained thrust on infrastructure, and stronger support to exports.

Amongst the sectors expected to be in focus, respondents identified infrastructure, manufacturing, defence and MSMEs amongst others, FICCI stated.

Industry also underscored the importance of fiscal prudence, with around 42 per cent of respondents expecting the fiscal deficit target of 4.4 per cent of GDP to be achieved in FY 2025-26, reinforcing confidence in the government's fiscal consolidation road-map.

The government must continue to lay thrust on manufacturing and capex, the respondents observed, calling for equal focus on measures to boost defence manufacturing by enhancing the capital outlay share in defence allocations to 30 per cent to modernise frontline assets, UAVs (drones) etc. Additionally, enhancing Drone PLI outlay to Rs 1,000 crore and establishing a Rs 1,000 crore Drone R&D Fund will give a boost to this emerging sector, they suggested.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the Union Budget 2026-27 on February 1.