2026

India’s digital asset markets have reached an inflection point where economic activity has outpaced institutional clarity. Millions of Indians participate in crypto markets, exchanges process meaningful daily volumes, and compliance expectations around taxation and anti-money laundering are steadily converging with global norms. Yet one critical question remains unresolved: How are Indian users protected when a digital asset platform fails? India’s digital asset ecosystem stands at a pivotal inflection point. Despite significant retail adoption and rising trading volumes, the country continues to operate without a comprehensive regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies. Hence, one critical question remains unresolved: How are Indian users protected when a digital asset platform fails? During the 2025 winter session of Parliament, Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha highlighted the need for a law on tokenization. It is encouraging to see that in 2026, this momentum is slowly shifting the narrative in the right direction. Recent regulatory action has focused, appropriately, on financial integrity. The Financial Intelligence Unit-India’s enhanced AML and CFT guidelines now require crypto service providers to meet standards comparable to traditional financial institutions, including governance disclosures, transaction monitoring, and board-level accountability. Starting April 2027, India will begin sharing and receiving crypto transaction data with other jurisdictions under the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF). 172 countries are signatories to the CARF framework. Offshore trading will no longer mean offshore opacity.

The Union Cabinet has approved two new semiconductor manufacturing projects under the India Semiconductor Mission (ISM) 1.0, taking the total number of cleared proposals to 12. The two projects, entailing a combined investment of about Rs 3,936 crore, will be set up in Gujarat and are expected to generate over 2,200 skilled jobs. Among the approvals is the country’s first commercial facility for Mini/Micro-LED display manufacturing based on Gallium Nitride (GaN) technology. This project, led by Crystal Matrix, will come up in Dholera and include an integrated compound semiconductor fabrication and assembly unit. The facility will cater to a wide range of applications, from televisions and smartphones to automotive displays and emerging segments such as extended reality devices. The second project, by Suchi Semicon, will establish an outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) facility in Surat. The unit will focus on discrete semiconductors with applications across power electronics, industrial systems, automotive and consumer electronics, with a proposed capacity of over 1 billion chips annually.Cabinet Clears Two New Semiconductor Units For Rs 3,900 Crore Under ISM 1.0; Total Approved Projects Rise To 12 Among the approvals is the country’s first commercial facility for Mini/Micro-LED display manufacturing based on Gallium Nitride (GaN) technology. Read Time:2 mins Share Photo by Vishnu Mohanan on Unsplash The Union Cabinet has approved two new semiconductor manufacturing projects under the India Semiconductor Mission (ISM) 1.0, taking the total number of cleared proposals to 12. The two projects, entailing a combined investment of about Rs 3,936 crore, will be set up in Gujarat and are expected to generate over 2,200 skilled jobs. Among the approvals is the country’s first commercial facility for Mini/Micro-LED display manufacturing based on Gallium Nitride (GaN) technology. This project, led by Crystal Matrix, will come up in Dholera and include an integrated compound semiconductor fabrication and assembly unit. The facility will cater to a wide range of applications, from televisions and smartphones to automotive displays and emerging segments such as extended reality devices. The second project, by Suchi Semicon, will establish an outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) facility in Surat. The unit will focus on discrete semiconductors with applications across power electronics, industrial systems, automotive and consumer electronics, with a proposed capacity of over 1 billion chips annually.PlayNextMute With these additions, cumulative investments under ISM have reached around Rs 1.64 lakh crore. The government said the approvals will strengthen India’s broader semiconductor ecosystem, complementing ongoing efforts in chip design and manufacturing. Of the projects cleared so far, two have already begun commercial shipments, while several others are at advanced stages and expected to go online soon, signalling steady progress in India’s ambition to build a domestic semiconductor value chain.

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva has cautioned that a ceasefire between the US and Iran would not instantly stabilise the global economy, warning of a prolonged period of adjustment.  Speaking amid ongoing tensions, Georgieva said the economic impact of the conflict would take at least three to four months to ease, even if fighting were to stop immediately, according to Al Jazeera. Earlier on Monday, the head of the International Monetary Fund warned that inflationary pressures are already building and the global economy could face a “much worse outcome” if the Middle East conflict drags on until 2027 and oil prices rise to around $125 per barrel. She said the continuation of the war has effectively ruled out the IMF’s “reference scenario”, which had assumed a short-lived conflict and projected a modest slowdown in global growth to 3.1% alongside a slight rise in inflation to 4.4%. “This scenario, with every day that passes, is further and further behind in the rear-view mirror,” Georgieva said.

India and the US are “very, very close” to signing the trade deal and need to get over “that last hurdle”, US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said on Tuesday. Landau said that India and the US have been negotiating for months and it was important for the two sides to “reach some closure” and move on with the many other issues on the agenda. “We are very aware of India’s importance on the world stage. I think it is very important to get a final resolution of that trade deal. We have been talking now for months that we are very close, and I think we are very close. But we have to get over that last hurdle,” Landau told reporters on the sidelines of the SelectUSA Investment Summit at National Harbour in Maryland near here. “I don’t have any huge inside information to provide on when that is coming, but I can just reiterate that I believe that we are very, very close,” said Landau, who recently visited India. “I think ultimately it’s important that we reach some closure on that and we finally sign it and move on with the many other issues on our agenda,” he said. “I think there’s no question that India is one of the great powers of the world. India now has the greatest population in the world. And, India has incredible potential, economic potential, but I think, frankly, for many decades it was not fully realised because of (the) economic models that India chose to pursue. “But I think India is now poised to have massive economic development and to lift many hundreds of millions of people out of poverty,” Landau said. India and the US announced the framework of the bilateral trade agreement on February 2 and released the text of the deal on February 7. Indian negotiators were in the US last month for discussions on the trade agreement. India is seeking preferential access to the US markets as part of the agreement, as the two countries eye the target of achieving bilateral trade of $500 billion by 2030. According to that framework, the US had agreed to reduce tariffs on India to 18%, from 50%. It had removed the 25 per cent tariffs on Indian goods for buying Russian oil and was to cut the remaining 25% to 18% under the pact. But on February 20, the US Supreme Court ruled against Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which were imposed under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). In the wake of the Supreme Court order, India is seeking to recalibrate and redraft the agreement to ensure that its interests are protected under the new global tariff framework.