Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has stated that the next phase of India’s growth must be driven by quality. Addressing the 53rd National Management Convention of the All India Management Association in New Delhi today, Smt. Sitharaman said that every factory, boardroom, service centre, and research and development team must strive for high standards, minimal defects, and greater reliability. She emphasised that management professionals and major industrialists should make quality awareness a shared discipline. This quality consciousness must be embedded within products, processes, services, and institutions.
Smt. Sitharaman noted that the global economy is passing through a period of uncertainty. Parallel shifts are also occurring in the structure of global trade and supply chains. The Finance Minister stated that in such an environment, resilience cannot mean retreating into economic isolationism. For India, she said, resilience signifies deep domestic capacity, fiscal strength, and industrial scale, enabling the country to withstand global shocks without hindering national development.
She pointed out that while the global economic growth rate is slowing to below three per cent, the Indian economy is expanding at a rate of approximately 8 per cent. She noted that growth in the last quarter was stronger than most forecasts had predicted.
Smt. Sitharaman remarked that this macroeconomic stability is prompting the world to re-evaluate India. She highlighted that on September 2, 2026, the Japan Credit Rating Agency upgraded India’s long-term foreign currency and local currency issuer ratings from ‘BBB+’ to ‘A-,’ with a stable outlook. This move raised the country’s rating ceiling to ‘A’.
