Commerce secretary Rajesh Agarwal said on Monday that India’s free trade agreements (FTAs) and industrial policies must move in tandem to fully leverage emerging economic opportunities. All stakeholders—including industry, consumers and governments—“have to walk the talk” to build a stronger industrial ecosystem, he added.
Speaking at the CII Business Summit in New Delhi, Agarwal said the pathway created by trade engagements and agreements can only deliver results if businesses on both sides actively capitalize on opportunities. “The potential that the pathway creates will need to be leveraged and that leveraging will happen by stakeholders on both sides. Industry will have to walk the talk. Maybe consumers will have to walk the talk. Governments will have to walk the talk,” he said.
He emphasized the need for complementary industrial and trade policies, saying industrial strategy cannot move “in two different directions” from the country’s trade priorities.
India has expanded its network of over the past few years and now has nine FTAs spanning 38 countries. This expansion began with the Mauritius deal in 2021, followed by the UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement in May 2022, and the Australia Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement in December 2022. The momentum continued into 2024 with the EFTA TEPA, which was signed in March and took effect in October 2025.
India subsequently finalized pacts with the UK (July 2025), Oman (December 2025), and New Zealand (December 2025), before securing a major agreement with the EU in January 2026. “With the United States, we have delivered a framework for an interim agreement on 7 February 2026 and cemented our global trade footprint,” the government said on 6 March.
Agarwal said, “If our focus is trade with certain economies, industrial policy will need to complement it so that those sectors are strengthened.” He added that industrial policies should help sectors substitute imports while also enabling domestic industry growth.
Export growth suffers
The commerce secretary also highlighted the need to create the right infrastructure and broader ecosystem support for industry, saying significant work remains to be done by all stakeholders to align India’s industrial capabilities with its trade ambitions.
“Imports have definitely grown because we live in a high-tariff environment and when our tariffs go down, there is an import diversity which takes place,” he said.
However, he noted that export growth has not been equally smooth, partly because tariffs in partner countries were already low and also because strong domestic demand in India may have limited export capacity. “Export growth has not been very smooth. It has not matched sales,” he said, adding that India remains “one of the fastest growing major economies in the world”.
Agarwal said India’s new-generation FTAs are being designed on a broader framework that goes beyond tariffs to provide long-term predictability and visibility for industries. “That has also been our focus area and we have made an effort to see that we go beyond tariffs. We give quite a 360-degree predictability and visibility to our industries on both sides,” he said, adding that such agreements are aimed at creating markets that support more sustainable growth. He also said industrial and trade policies need to complement each other, as industrial policy and trade priorities cannot move in two different directions.
From the government’s perspective, Agarwal said one of the key challenges is ensuring that businesses across the country fully understand and use the opportunities created by FTAs. “The opportunities that FTAs bring to the table need to be communicated to everybody across the country. That dissemination is very important,” he said.
‘Made in India’ branding
At the same event, Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade () secretary Amardeep Singh Bhatia said the government is preparing to launch a broader ‘Made in India’ branding scheme after an encouraging pilot in the steel sector, with the framework now ready and industry consultations underway for its rollout across manufacturing sectors.
Bhatia said the government is targeting the “missing middle” in manufacturing by focusing on intermediate goods production and helping micro, small and medium enterprises () grow. Referring to prime minister Narendra Modi’s earlier call to identify 100 products for domestic manufacturing to reduce import dependence, Bhatia said the government has identified a set of products across sectors that are either not manufactured in India or are being produced inadequately, including components in the automobile and motorcycle sectors, where technology gaps can be bridged.
Building globally competitive industries
The DPIIT Secretary emphasised that technology, AI, resilient supply chains, quality standards, clean energy, and industrial competitiveness are no longer isolated goals, but parts of a single, integrated national agenda. He noted that leveraging technology will boost productivity, foster smarter factories, and integrate Indian enterprises into global production networks.
The objective, he said, is to reduce friction, lower costs, build scale, and develop globally competitive industries. To achieve this, the government is implementing simultaneous supply-side and demand-side reforms to strengthen competitiveness while expanding market opportunities for domestic businesses.
Bhatia highlighted that the government has undertaken several landmark reforms in collaboration with the industry to achieve the “Viksit Bharat” vision of a $30 trillion economy by 2047, with manufacturing driving this transformation. Key initiatives include enhancing the ease of doing business, deregulation, decriminalization, labor reforms, and infrastructure projects like dedicated freight corridors to reduce logistics costs. He added that sector-specific production-linked incentive (PLI) schemes aim to build complete value chains, while on the demand side, recent FTAs with partners like the EFTA, EU, Oman, and the UK are opening new overseas markets for Indian products.