Nirmala Sitharaman

Nirmala Sitharaman is operating on three fronts at once. At the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meeting in Asheville, hosted by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, she is leading India's finance-track engagement, supporting the US presidency's growth priorities and inviting Bessent to a follow-up economic partnership meeting in New Delhi. She held bilateral meetings with World Bank President Ajay Banga, EU Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis, and IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, pushing trade and investment ties, an India-EU FTA, and IMF surveillance reform that reflects structural shifts in emerging markets. She also met the UK Chancellor, FATF President, and finance ministers of Russia and South Korea on payment-system interoperability.

Before Asheville, she was on a nine-day US and Canada investor roadshow, pitching India to corporate executives in Chicago and addressing the Indian diaspora. The roadshow is partly a response to a Bank of America survey flagging India as Asia's least-preferred stock market and record $457 million in outbound investment by Indian residents in June. Her pitch is straightforward: India offers scale, sustained growth, a young population, expanding consumption, and rapidly deepening capital markets. She is projecting 7 to 7.2 percent GDP growth for FY27, and Q1 growth came in at 7.8 percent, which the BJP is using to rebut Rahul Gandhi's criticism of the economy.

At home, she moved the Taxation and Other Laws Amendment Bill through the Lok Sabha, removing the statutory guarantee that kept UPI free and allowing a merchant discount rate on commercial transactions. She has clarified that consumers and person-to-person UPI stay free and that MDR applies only to merchants, sparring publicly with Congress leader Jairam Ramesh, who alleged the change was forced by the US to open the sector to Visa and MasterCard. She chairs the GST Council's 57th meeting on September 12, the first in over a year, with a possible GST cut on sub-25,000-rupee mobile handsets on the agenda. She is also publicly holding her own tax department to account, scolding officials for laidback governance and telling them to consolidate to owned premises rather than pay phenomenal rents. Her tax-administration message rests on a five-R framework delivered on Income Tax Day 2026, the first since the new Income Tax Act replaced the 1961 statute and cut sections from 819 to 536.