Budget 2026 Must Prioritize Execution, Ease of Business: AU Advisory

From a corporate and advisory standpoint, the firm emphasised that the coming budget must prioritise structural clarity over incremental adjustments, ensuring that India's regulatory and legal architecture is aligned with long-term economic competitiveness.

AU Corporate Advisory and Legal Services underscored that the next phase of India's growth requires a decisive pivot from policy proliferation to policy performance.

Businesses today seek certainty, predictable tax regimes, simplified compliance, rationalised GST structures, time-bound approvals and reduced regulatory friction. According to the firm's analysis, India's challenge is not capital availability or entrepreneurial capacity, but execution bottlenecks that erode confidence and delay investment decisions. Budget 2026, therefore, must reinforce trust between the state and private enterprise by delivering consistency, transparency and administrative efficiency.

A key focus area highlighted by the firm is the MSME ecosystem, which contributes nearly 30% to GDP and employs over 110 million people. AU Corporate Advisory and Legal Services advocates repositioning MSMEs from a protection-oriented framework to a growth- led policy approach.

Expanded credit guarantees, faster dispute resolution, improved invoice discounting mechanisms, technology upgradation incentives and formalisation-friendly compliance structures are critical to unlocking MSME scalability.

The firm also stressed the need for stable and simplified tax frameworks that reduce litigation, strengthen advance ruling mechanisms and encourage long-term investment rather than short-term arbitrage.

Commenting on the broader policy direction, Akshat Khetan, Founder of AU Corporate Advisory and Legal Services, noted that sustainable economic growth cannot be driven by subsidies alone and must be anchored in productivity, enterprise and confidence in private capital.

From a legal-economic perspective, he highlighted that ease of doing business is inseparable from ease of dispute resolution, advocating focused fiscal attention toward judicial digitisation, commercial courts, arbitration infrastructure and faster contract enforcement as essential economic enablers rather than standalone legal reforms.

Looking ahead, AU Corporate Advisory and Legal Services also drew attention to emerging growth drivers such as technology, intellectual property, artificial intelligence and data-led enterprises. Strategic investments in deep-tech ecosystems, semiconductor manufacturing, cybersecurity frameworks and university-industry collaboration are necessary to move Indian businesses up the global value chain. Equally important is future-ready employment generation through industry-aligned skilling, apprenticeship-led learning, green energy capabilities and service export readiness.

The firm further emphasised strengthening cooperative federalism through performance-linked grants and greater fiscal empowerment of states, while aligning sustainability goals with economic pragmatism to position green growth as a competitive advantage.

In its assessment, AU Corporate Advisory and Legal Services concluded that Budget 2026 represents a critical opportunity to reinforce institutional strength, policy clarity and investor trust. By prioritising execution, legal certainty and enterprise-led growth, the budget can lay the groundwork for durable economic confidence, enabling businesses to build, invest and compete with clarity and conviction.

- ANI