CHANDIGARH, MAY 29 — Punjab Finance Minister Harpal Singh Cheema on Thursday stated that India’s exclusion from the world’s top 15 economies in the latest Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Confidence Index reflects a structural decline in international investor trust under the current central government.
The finance minister noted that while the nation maintained a position among the global top 10 investment destinations a decade ago in 2016, it has completely dropped out of the top 15 list in 2026. Cheema expressed these concerns on social media, asserting that the country’s economic trajectory shows a severe disconnect from central policy narratives.
“India was once among the world’s top destinations for foreign investment,” Finance Minister Cheema stated in a post on X. “In 2016, India ranked among the Top-10 economies for global FDI confidence. Today, India is not even in the Top-15.”
According to the finance minister, international capital is actively turning toward competing economies due to growing administrative ambiguities within India’s domestic corporate ecosystem. Cheema added that the central government has consistently prioritized short-term headline management over comprehensive structural updates. This approach, he suggested, has diluted national leverage during critical international trade negotiations.
“Investors are losing confidence,” Cheema noted, pointing out that numerous memoranda of understanding fail to progress past initial announcements. “MoUs remain on paper, the investment climate has weakened, policy uncertainty is rising and trade deals are being signed from a position of compromise rather than strength.”
The finance minister concluded that despite continuous public campaigns celebrating an era of unprecedented growth, foreign enterprise leaders are shifting focus toward markets that offer superior regulatory consistency. Cheema stated that the central government’s reliance on visibility strategies cannot substitute for genuine economic stability or reverse the drop in global capital rankings.
