New Delhi, Jan 22 (IANS) A FICCI pre-Budget survey on Thursday reflected strong optimism across industry, with nearly 80 per cent of respondents expressing confidence in India’s growth prospects.

Nearly half of the participants expect GDP growth to remain in the 7–8 per cent range in FY 2026–27, reaffirming faith in India’s medium-term fundamentals despite persistent global uncertainties.

According to the FICCI survey, 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 roadmap.

“Three macroeconomic priorities clearly emerge for the Union Budget 2026–27 -- job creation, a sustained thrust on infrastructure, and stronger support to exports. Among the sectors expected to be in focus, respondents identified infrastructure, manufacturing, defence and MSMEs, among others,” the findings showed.

According to the report, government must continue to lay thrust on manufacturing and capex.

“Setting up of a mega electronics industrial cluster to co-locate OEMs, EMS firms and component suppliers will be important to give a further push to this strategic sector. Equally important is to lay thrust on defence manufacturing,” it suggested.

It further stated that the government must also enhance the capital outlay share in defence allocations to 30 per cent to modernise frontline assets, UAVs, counter-UAV systems, EW systems and AI-enabled capabilities.

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.

“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 is clearly evident,” said the survey.

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 incentive and refund mechanisms.

It is recommended that the Union budget enhances allocations under the Remission of Duties and Taxes on Exported Products (RoDTEP) to improve export competitiveness. Industry also looks forward to announcements related to reforms in SEZ policy and further rationalisation of customs tariffs in the budget.

The customs tariffs can be further rationalised by converging rate slabs to three levels. This would significantly simplify the system, bring certainty and reduce compliance costs, said the FICCI survey.

On the direct tax front, key expectations of respondents included simplifying compliance through digitisation, providing tax certainty, and improving dispute resolution and litigation management.

--IANS

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