Budget: It combines strategic ambition with fiscal discipline to set India up for a sustainable growth trajectory
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Markets don’t always get it right, especially not immediately. India’s 2026-27 budget sparked an initial selloff, with investors obsessing over the government’s elevated headline borrowing.
Indices recovered soon after, aided by positive news on a trade deal with the US. What marks the budget out is its fiscal discipline and strategic ambition. It reveals a government betting on India’s long-term trajectory.
After years of successful fiscal consolidation, India is channelling resources towards an essential capacity build-up: infrastructure that works, human capital that competes globally and institutions that enable growth. Following the 2025-26 pattern, operational spending—administrative costs, central government programmes and overheads—will grow slower than the economy. Revenue spending will continue to fall while interest payments are expected to be contained—both as a proportion of GDP.
Revenue expenditure includes grants for capital spending by states. Accounting for these, the effective capital-to-current spending ratio is expected to approach 50% in 2026-27 from less than 40% in 2025-26. Revenue compression stems from tax measures, with income tax and GST reductions putting money back into citizens’ pockets and stimulating consumption.
This has pushed tax buoyancy below one, with a sustained decline expected ahead. Non-tax revenues in 2025-26 beat expectations primarily through telecom licence fees and spectrum charges, which more than doubled. The budget expects these to moderate in 2026-27.
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