Prime Minister Narendra Modi chairs a meeting with eminent economists and sectoral experts, at NITI Aayog in New Delhi on Tuesday. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Niti Aayog Vice Chairman Suman Bery, Principal Secretary to the PM PK Mishra and others also seen.
| Photo Credit: ANI

Job creation, improving farm productivity, and mobilising public funds for infrastructure development were some of the issues that figured during the interaction between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and economists ahead of the 2025-26 Union Budget.

The Prime Minister on Tuesday (December 24, 2024) met eminent economists and sectoral experts at NITI Aayog to hear their views and suggestions for the upcoming Budget.

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is scheduled to present the Budget for 2025-26 in the Lok Sabha on February 1, 2025.

According to an official statement, PM Modi emphasised that Viksit Bharat can be achieved through a fundamental change in mindset, which is focused towards making India developed by 2047.

The participants shared their views on several issues, including navigating challenges posed by global economic uncertainties and geopolitical tensions, strategies to enhance employment particularly among the youth, and create sustainable job opportunities across sectors.

Suggestions were also made on aligning education and training programmes with the evolving needs of the job market, enhancing agricultural productivity and creating sustainable rural employment opportunities, attracting private investment and mobilising public funds for infrastructure projects to boost economic growth.

Suggestions were also made for promoting financial inclusion and boosting exports and attracting foreign investment, as per the statement.

Renowned economists and analysts present at the interaction included Surjit S. Bhalla, Ashok Gulati, Sudipto Mundle, Dharmakirti Joshi, Janmejaya Sinha, Madan Sabnavis, Amita Batra, Ridham Desai, Chetan Ghate, Bharat Ramaswami, Soumya Kanti Ghosh, Siddhartha Sanyal, Laveesh Bhandari, Rajani Sinha, Keshab Das, Pritam Banerjee, Rahul Bajoria, Nikhil Gupta, and Shashwat Alok, the statement added.

The meeting comes in the backdrop of worries around deceleration of economic growth.

The Indian economy grew 6.7% in the June quarter and 5.4% in the July-September period.

Recently, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) lowered India’s economic growth forecast to 6.5% for the current financial year from its earlier estimate of 7% due to lower-than-expected growth in private investment and housing demand.

The multilateral development bank has also lowered India’s growth forecast for the 2025-26 financial year.

Earlier this month, the Reserve Bank of India also significantly lowered the growth projection for the current fiscal year to 6.6% from 7.2% earlier.

Next year’s Budget will also be watched for any pre-emptive measures the government might take in response to a possible hike in U.S. tariffs after U.S. President-elect Donald Trump last week said India charges a lot of tariff and threatened to impose reciprocal tax.