CII pegs India's growth rate at 7 per cent for 2025-26 amid rising private investments

New Delhi, Jan 19 (IANS) An increase in private investments and employment is expected to keep India's overall growth around a stable 6.4-6.7 per cent during the current financial year and is likely to drive up the growth to 7.0 per cent in FY26, according to a survey released by apex business chamber CII on Sunday. 

India has emerged as a bright spot amid geopolitical fault lines that have disrupted global supply chains and posed serious challenges to global growth, the survey said.

The sound economic policies initiated by the Government, with emphasis on public capex-led growth, helped revive the economy, it pointed out.

The pan-India CII survey, which was conducted over the past 30 days, suggested that 75 per cent of the respondents believe that the current economic environment is conducive to private investments.

"Given that 70 per cent of the firms surveyed said that they would invest in FY'26, an uptick in private investments might be on the cards over the next few quarters," said Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General, CII.

Along with economic growth, employment generation has also been at the centre stage in recent policy discussions. India's vision of a "Viksit Bharat" by 2047 is hinged upon performing well on the imperative of "creation of good quality jobs".

Encouragingly, the early results from the survey show that about 97 per cent of the sample firms are likely to increase employment in both 2024-25 and 2025-26. In fact, 79 per cent of the respondents' firms said they added more people over the past three years.

Responding to the question on the extent of employment generation expected in FY'25 and FY'26, about 97 per cent of the firms indicated that employment is expected to increase with 42 per cent to 46 per cent of the firms indicating a 10 to 20 per cent increase in employment over and above the existing workforce and about 31 per cent to 36 per cent of them have indicated an expected increase in employment of up to 10 per cent.

The average increase in direct employment due to planned investments in the next year is expected to be in the range of 15 per cent to 22 per cent between the manufacturing and services sectors respectively. Similar expectations were seen in the interim results on indirect employment with manufacturing and services firms expecting about a 14 per cent increase in indirect employment respectively over and above the existing levels of employment.

The majority of the firms surveyed indicated that it takes anywhere between one to six months to fill in vacancies at Senior management, Management/ Supervisory level, while regular and contractual workers take less time to fill in a vacant position indicating the need to fill the availability of skilled staff at the higher level in sample firms.

On wage growth, which has an impact on personal consumption, a major proportion (40 per cent to 45 per cent) of sample firms surveyed saw an increase in average wage growth for senior management, managerial/ supervisory roles, and regular workers, in the range of 10 per cent to 20 per cent in FY' 25. The trend was similar in FY' 24.

The CII survey was based on a sample of 300 firms spread across all industry sizes (Large, Medium and Small),

--IANS

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