Mantris who meant business in 2025

Nirmala Sitharaman, Mansukh Mandaviya, and Piyush Goyal

• GST 2.0 and new Income Tax Act boost trust and household income in 2025
• India secures major trade pacts, enhancing export growth and global integration
• Labour reforms streamline laws, improve social security, and empower workforce

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The year 2025 witnessed a profound structural transformation, driven by a trifecta of reforms in taxation, global trade, and labour welfare. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman spearheaded a "fiscal reset" through GST 2.0 and the landmark Income-Tax Act, prioritizing institutional trust and boosting household disposable income.

Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal accelerated India’s global integration through high-value trade pacts like the UK-CETA and EFTA, positioning the nation as a resilient manufacturing alternative. And complementing these shifts, the implementation of the four new Labour Codes dismantled archaic regulations to create an inclusive and digitally empowered workforce,  securing India’s path toward a modernized, manufacturing and export-led economy.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman

Nirmala Sitharaman, India’s Finance Minister, was one of the most influential voices shaping the country’s economic reform trajectory, steering a policy shift anchored in tax simplification and institutional trust in 2025. The year’s economic narrative under her watch has been built around stability, credibility, and a  restructuring of the tax ecosystem — both for businesses operating within the GST framework and for households, particularly at relatively lower incomes, who saw a significant tax cut.

Sitharaman during the year also ensured public capital expenditure push – by both Centre and states -- continues to stimulate economic growth in the country, while maintaining fiscal prudence.

Three key accomplishments in 2025

• GST 2.0: The initiative focuses on rate rationalisation, reduced slab complexity, and technology-driven compliance, positioning GST as a maturing system rather than a still-settling reform.
• Income Tax cuts: The government’s move towards calibrated reductions in personal income tax slabs — including a higher tax-free threshold (Rs 12 lakh per annum) — has been framed as an effort to lift disposable incomes while nudging taxpayers towards a simpler regime.
• New I-T Act: The new Income Tax Act, which repealed the 1961 law, is a legislative overhaul aimed at improving clarity, reducing litigation, and aligning taxation with growth and formalisation objectives.

Why it matters?

Together, GST 2.0 and personal tax relief have reframed the reform debate around predictability, investment confidence, and household spending resilience. A more efficient GST ecosystem has the potential to lower the cost of doing business, reduce compliance ambiguity and strengthen supply-chain transparency — particularly for exporters, MSMEs and manufacturing sectors seeking scale.

Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal

2025 has been a crucial year for India, as the country’s global economic partnerships, spearheaded by Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal, have gained significant momentum through a series of recent trade agreements, which are reshaping its export landscape.

The landmark India–UK Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) grants duty-free access to 99 percent of Indian exports, setting the stage for bilateral trade to reach US$ 100 billion by 2030. India also concluded two crucial trade pacts with Oman and New Zealand while the trade pact with the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) became operational.

The US-India Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) has not been finalized, but Goyal says that both the countries are in “advanced stages" of negotiations for the agreement.

Three key achievements of 2025

• Export Promotion Mission: Apart from the FTAs, the Commerce Ministry launched the EPM to boost India’s export competitiveness. The Mission will provide a comprehensive, flexible, and digitally driven framework for export promotion, with a total outlay of Rs 25,060 crore for FY 2025–26 to FY 2030–31.
• Diversification of exports: Despite the imposition of 50 percent tariffs, India’s goods exports have grown marginally by 2 percent in April-November, thanks to diversification by exporters. Exports are increasingly finding new markets  across Europe, East Asia, and South Asia. Notably, shipments to the US grew about 22 per cent in November 2025, even amid tariff pressures, while exports to Spain surged nearly 150 per cent, alongside strong growth to China and Bangladesh.
• Withdrawal of QCOs: More than 21 quality control orders were withdrawn in 2025, aimed at enhancing ease of doing business. The withdrawals were on key raw materials, including textile intermediates, polymers, and metals. The Department of Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), the nodal department for issuing QCOs, along with Niti Aayog prepared the blueprint for such withdrawals.

Why it matters?

In 2025, these reforms acted as an engine for growth. By securing duty-free access to key markets  via the UK-CETA and EFTA, India is insulating its exporters from global trade wars. The EPM and the withdrawal of QCOs on raw materials empower MSMEs by slashing input costs and compliance hurdles, ensuring exports remains competitive and resilient despite high-tariff environments.

Labour Minister Mansukh Mandaviya

The much-awaited labour reforms were finally implemented in 2025, aimed at strengthening India’s workforce and boosting economic growth going forward. Labour Minister Mansukh Mandaviya has called these laws "not just ordinary changes, but a major step taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the welfare of the workforce".

The four labour laws, which have replaced 29 existing laws, are the following: Code on Wages, 2019; Industrial Relations Code, 2020; Code on Social Security, 2020; and the Occupational Safety, Health, and Working Conditions Code, 2020.

These laws bring in uniformity of definitions, web-based Inspection system to ensure transparency and accountability in enforcement, and eliminates inspector raj, instead replacing inspection   with facilitation.

The three key other themes

• Viksit Bharat Rozgar Yojana: The Ministry also implemented the PM Viksit Bharat Rozgar Yojana, aimed to support employment generation, enhance employability and social security across all sectors, with special focus on the manufacturing sector.
• Improved social security coverage: The Ministry also oversaw the improvement in social security coverage in the country. India’s social protection coverage has risen sharply from 19% of its total population in 2015 to 64.3% in 2025, as per ministry data.
• EPF auto-settlement upto Rs 5 lakhs: The EPFO approved auto settlement of withdrawals up to Rs 5 lakh, dispensing with mandatory cheque/passbook uploading. It also created a Centralized Pension Payment System (CPPS) enabling pensioners to get pension from any bank, any branch, anywhere in India.

Why it matters?

In 2025, these reforms represent a historic shift from a restrictive, colonial-era labor regime to a modern, worker-centric ecosystem. By consolidating 29 laws into four streamlined codes, India has effectively dismantled the "Inspector Raj," replacing harassment with transparency and trust-based compliance. Additionally, by removing gender-based barriers--- such as scrapping various rules preventing women from working at night--- and simplifying EPFO withdrawals, these measures create a dignified, flexible, and inclusive workforce, positioning India as a global benchmark for balancing industrial growth with robust social security.