India's Commerce Minister Urges Businesses to Boost Productivity and Embrace Global Challenges

New Delhi: India shouldn't worry about productive imports such as capital goods or panic over the ongoing crisis in West Asia, commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal said on Tuesday, adding the country just needs to "pull up our socks and become more productive."

The minister urged the industry to reduce unnecessary travel and not look at Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ideas to reduce imports and forex outgo with suspicion and trepidation.

"India and Prime Minister Modi have never let a crisis go by and the situation in the world is an opportunity, a moment of uncertainty that we should engage more deeply with," he said at Assocham's India Business Reform Summit 2026.

"I call these challenges 'situations'. Last year was a situation with 50% US tariffs and then the West Asia crisis came at year end," Goyal said. "In such a situation, we do not need to panic," he said.

He urged the industry to adopt greater efficiency and reduce waste by learning from global best practices, including Japanese manufacturing systems.

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Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) finalised by India are opening doors for greater engagement which needs to be leveraged for attracting investments and increasing exports rather than allowing imports alone to rise. "Unless businesses encash the opportunity for inviting investments and promoting exports, you can jolly well land up with a situation where more imports come in and we don't take the benefit of the open markets," he said.

Goyal said India had emerged as a competitive manufacturing and services hub, adding that productive imports such as data centres and precision capital goods were essential growth enablers. He emphasised the need to increase exports of value-added products across sectors including automobiles, electronics, consumer goods and agro-based industries.

"We have seen more problems in the past. There was no bigger problem than Covid, but they all pass. We need to be awake to the opportunities and recognise that problems could go on for long," he said. "What is decided in the morning may change in the evening...we don't need to panic."

Referring to suggestions received during discussions with industry representatives, he said the government is examining the possibility of establishing a single body at industrial parks to function as a one-stop shop for all central and state approvals.

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India is eyeing annual exports worth $1 trillion and exporters should proactively leverage upcoming FTAs by exploring new markets, conducting sampling and trial orders and increasing global engagement even before the agreements formally come into effect, the minister said.

As per Goyal, exporters are getting a higher number of orders because of the upcoming FTAs.

India-EU FTA

The India-European Union FTA will help attract greater investments into India, boost automobile manufacturing in the country and export to third countries, additional secretary in the commerce department Darpan Jain said at an event organised by Ficci.

Jain said the auto sector appeared to be a challenging area during negotiations as India has high import duties.

On social security agreements with EU members, Jain said India already has this pact with 14 countries out of 27 members. "Seven we are negotiating and six more are being planned," he said.