India's FTAs to Cover 76% of Global GDP, Says Piyush Goyal

Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal addressed the curtain raiser of the Invest Telangana Global Summit in New Delhi on 29 October 2026. He set out the reach of India's trade agreements, the state of the economy and six steps he wants Telangana to take, and congratulated Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy on convening the summit.

How far the trade agreements reach

The minister put the arithmetic of market access in plain figures. Agreements already in force give India preferential access to economies with a combined output of 70 trillion dollars. Of that, 10 trillion dollars comes from pacts settled more than a decade ago and a further 60 trillion dollars from the nine agreements concluded recently. Talks are on for another eight bilateral or multilateral agreements, which would add 15 trillion dollars. Taken together, India would enjoy preferential access to about 76 per cent of a world economy of 115 trillion dollars. The nine agreements of the past four and a half years, he said, open 38 developed and relatively prosperous countries to Indian business, countries that in turn supply the advanced equipment, high-technology devices and graphics processing units Indian industry needs.

The economy and the export target

Against an IMF projection of global trade growing by only 1.9 per cent, India has set an export target of one trillion dollars and is aiming at 15 per cent growth this year. The minister recalled that the country was once counted among the Fragile Five and is now the fifth largest and fastest growing large economy, citing growth of 7.7 per cent last year and 7.8 per cent in the first quarter of the current year, with an expectation of above 7 per cent in the quarter ending September. He noted conflicts in West Asia and Ukraine and disruption around the Strait of Hormuz, and pointed to credit rating upgrades, among them one by the Japanese Credit Rating Agency, its first for India in more than 35 years.

Telangana's own target

Telangana wants to grow from roughly 200 billion dollars today to 3 trillion dollars by 2047, a target the minister welcomed as achievable. He drew on the state's trading past, recalling the Motupalli Abhaya Shasana, a maritime charter issued in 1244 by the Kakatiya ruler Ganapati Deva, which gave traders stability and predictability, and said investors still look for the same certainty. He mentioned the foundation stone laid for the Zaheerabad Industrial Smart City and the Kakatiya Mega Textile Park at Warangal, which he called the first fully functional PM MITRA park, built on the 5F idea of farm to fibre, fibre to factory, factory to fashion and fashion to foreign.

Six suggestions for the state

• Identify Telangana's 50 leading export products in goods and services and map the markets where FTAs give preference.
• Set up FTA help desks in every district for MSMEs, farmers and startups.
• Take GI-tagged produce such as Tandur red gram, Chatpata chilli and Nizamabad turmeric abroad with traceability, packaging and branding.
• Move pharmaceuticals up the value chain through key starting materials, active pharmaceutical ingredients, biosimilars and biotechnology rather than generics alone.
• Build precision engineering, testing facilities and global partnerships in space, aerospace, maintenance and repair, defence, electronics, artificial intelligence and quantum computing.
• Speed up ease-of-doing-business reforms by decriminalising minor offences and giving time-bound single-window clearances.

As an example of what a trade pact can do for a small producer, he cited the dispatch of GI-tagged Tandur red gram from Hyderabad to Australia under the India-Australia agreement.