Budget 2026 Expectations Live: Green Energy Ambitions, Food Security Push And More

Dr. Mukesh Batra, Founder-Chairman Emeritus, Dr Batra’s Healthcare says “For 2025-26, the Ministry of Health was allocated close to ₹1 lakh crore, reflecting a 10–11% increase and reaffirming the government’s commitment to strengthening healthcare capacity. As we look ahead to Budget 2026-27, there is a significant opportunity to build on this momentum by re-orienting healthcare delivery towards prevention, early intervention, and personalized care. We also expect the forthcoming Budget to strengthen insurance coverage and wellness provisions to include long-term preventive care, while accelerating investments in digital health infrastructure and community-based clinics."

Amit Vatsyayan, Leader – GPS (Agriculture, Livelihood, Social and Skills), EY India, outlines priorities. “Scaling climate-resilient irrigation, micro-irrigation and renewable-powered agri assets can unlock productivity gains. At the same time, PPPs in storage, logistics and R&D are critical to reducing post-harvest losses and improving price realisation.”

According to Nuvama, tax relief is unlikely to be a major lever in FY27. “With recent income tax and GST rationalisation already weighing on revenues, further tax cuts appear unlikely. FY27 is more likely to focus on investment support through deregulation and capex rather than additional consumption-led measures.”

Economists at Citi expect infrastructure spending to remain steady. “We expect continued emphasis on public capex in FY27, led by defence and urban infrastructure. While overall capex growth should stay above nominal GDP growth, allocations may become more selective, with greater use of off-budget and PSU-led spending.”

Shashi Kant Singh , Partner—Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness, PwC India says that "the expectations from this year's budget are enhanced outlays for the sector to sustain the government's aspirations towards self-sufficiency and position India as a global agricultural powerhouse. Research and development (high yielding and climate resilient varieties), infrastructure (production, storage and processing), digital agricultural solutions (ag stack and AgTech) and exports (quality and higher value capture) should be the key focus areas for the upcoming budget."

Vinay Rustagi, Chief Business Officer at Premier Energies says that  "The renewable sector has been a major priority area for the government and we expect more favourable announcements supporting the sector in this budget. The two signature schemes, PM Surya Ghar Yojana and PM KUSUM are expected to ramp up significantly and should get much higher budgetary allocation. We are also expecting rollout of the PM KUSUM 2.0 scheme with higher targets and incentives. Other focus areas should be incentive packages for R&D as well as local manufacturing of ingots and wafers to improve self-sufficiency for Solar module manufacturing."