India and New Zealand signed a comprehensive free-trade agreement that is expected to come into force by the end of 2026. India gets duty-free access across all tariff lines in New Zealand, while New Zealand gets calibrated access to Indian markets. Sensitive areas such as dairy have been kept out, showing India’s cautious trade strategy.

The agreement matters because India is increasingly choosing bilateral deals over very large trade groupings. With goods and services trade with New Zealand still relatively small, the opportunity lies not just in higher exports but also in quality improvement, compliance learning and access to Asia-Pacific value chains.

For MBA interviews, use this example to explain that trade policy is not only about tariff reduction. It is also about export readiness, MSME integration, standards, logistics, services mobility and domestic capability building.

Sun Pharmaceutical announced the acquisition of US-based Organon & Co for an enterprise value of $11.75 billion. The deal is one of the largest overseas acquisitions by an Indian company and strengthens Sun Pharma in women’s health, biosimilars and multiple global markets.

The deeper strategic signal is that Indian pharma companies are no longer depending only on the US generic-drug opportunity. Organon gives Sun access to markets such as China, South Korea and Spain, along with a more diversified branded and specialty portfolio. However, the acquisition also brings leverage and integration risk.

For GD-PI, compare this with earlier Indian overseas acquisitions such as Tata Steel-Corus. Big acquisitions can rapidly increase scale, but post-merger integration determines whether the deal becomes a growth engine or a debt burden.

The Reserve Bank of India finalised guidelines for the expected credit loss-based loan-loss provisioning framework. This replaces the current incurred-loss model, where banks provide mainly after stress becomes visible. Under ECL, banks must estimate risk earlier using probability of default, loss given default and exposure at default.

The framework has a three-stage structure. Stage 1 standard loans attract 12-month expected loss provisioning, while Stage 2 and Stage 3 loans require lifetime expected loss provisioning. Banks can spread the transition impact over four years, up to March 2031.

RBI also finalised Basel-linked credit-risk norms, raising the threshold for 150% risk weight on unrated corporate/NBFC exposures to ₹500 crore from the earlier proposed ₹200 crore. This shows the regulator is balancing prudence with credit flow.

India expects the FY27 fertiliser subsidy bill to rise around 20% because global fertiliser prices have jumped amid the West Asia crisis. The government has indicated that retail prices of urea and DAP will remain unchanged, meaning the shock will be absorbed through subsidy rather than passed directly to farmers.

This is important because India is a large importer of urea, DAP and raw materials such as LNG, phosphoric acid, rock phosphate and potash. Fertiliser subsidy protects food security and farm economics, but it also increases fiscal pressure when global prices rise sharply.

Mint’s sectoral analysis shows that fertilisers, airlines and ceramics face severe stress, while sectors such as FMCG, automobiles, real estate and hospitality may face second-order demand pressure through inflation and weaker consumer sentiment.

A clean power shift is visible globally: renewables overtook coal in the global power mix in 2025. In India, renewable generation rose faster than demand, and coal’s share fell from 75% to about 71%. However, India remains far more coal-dependent than the world average, so the energy transition is still incomplete.

The West Asia crisis can accelerate clean energy adoption because imported fossil fuel vulnerability becomes more visible during war. Falling battery storage costs are especially important because they can solve the key weakness of solar power: intermittency.

Separately, NITI Aayog’s DPI 2047 roadmap argues that digital public infrastructure should move beyond finance into agriculture, jobs, health, education, credit and energy. CEA V Anantha Nageswaran linked DPI to productivity gains that can offset external shocks.

Cert-In warned companies about frontier AI systems such as Claude Mythos, saying advanced language models may autonomously discover vulnerabilities, analyse source code and chain together multi-stage attacks. This shifts AI from a productivity tool to a cybersecurity risk-management challenge.

At the same time, the government may tweak the Design Linked Incentive scheme for semiconductor chips by linking support to startups that can raise funds from angel investors or venture capital funds. The logic is to support projects with market validation, real-world application and shorter lab-to-market timelines.

Data centres are becoming the physical backbone of AI and cloud growth. Lodha’s plan for 1 GW power shell capacity near Mumbai shows how real estate, energy and digital infrastructure are merging into a new business category.

• FTAs create opportunity, but competitiveness creates exports.
• Energy security is the foundation of economic sovereignty.
• Should India absorb global price shocks through subsidies?
• Expected credit loss norms: better discipline or higher compliance burden?
• Can clean energy reduce India’s geopolitical vulnerability?
• AI is both a productivity tool and a security threat.
• Indian companies going global: ambition or risk?
• Digital public infrastructure as a route to inclusive productivity.