Economy

The numbers clearly show that UPI is now the backbone of India’s mass retail digital payments system. While UPI dominated transaction volume, other systems continued to serve their own specialised roles. NEFT and Prepaid Payment Instruments each accounted for 3.6% of transaction volume, while RTGS contributed only 0.1% of transaction volume because it is mainly used for large-value settlements.

The IMF’s India country page also lists India’s projected real GDP growth for 2026 at 6.5%, underlining the broad confidence around India’s medium-term economic momentum.

For many artisans, home-based businesses, farmer producer organisations, small manufacturers and local retailers, the challenge has never been only production. It has often been market access. A walnut grower in a hill district, a food processor in the North-East or a small household enterprise may have a good product, but limited reach, weak buyer connectivity, poor digital visibility, high platform costs and logistical hurdles can prevent them from scaling. TEAM is aimed at solving precisely this gap by helping such enterprises with onboarding, cataloguing, packaging, logistics and customer management.

According to NPCI BHIM Services Limited, monthly transaction volumes on the BHIM app rose from 5.93 crore in April 2025 to 21.6 crore in March 2026. The momentum continued into the new financial year as well, with the app recording 22.49 crore transactions worth ₹26,040 crore in April 2026. This shows that the growth was not just a temporary spike, but part of a larger behavioural shift towards digital payments.

India’s digital transformation has already become visible in everyday life. The spread of UPI, Aadhaar-linked services, paperless governance, digital public infrastructure, optical fibre expansion and online service delivery has changed how citizens, businesses and government institutions interact. The shift from a cash-heavy and paperwork-heavy system towards a more digital economy has improved speed, transparency and accessibility in many areas of public and commercial life.

The Index of Eight Core Industries tracks the performance of coal, crude oil, natural gas, refinery products, fertilizers, steel, cement and electricity. These sectors are important because they together carry a 40.27% weight in the Index of Industrial Production, making the core industries index an early indicator of broader industrial momentum in the economy.

The development is more than a routine capacity addition. Kharkhoda is emerging as one of Maruti Suzuki’s most important manufacturing bases and is expected to become one of Suzuki’s largest four-wheeler production locations globally once it reaches its planned capacity of 10 lakh vehicles per annum. The second plant also fits into the company’s earlier plan to add 5 lakh units of production capacity during FY 2026–27.