India Trade — Sector & Policy Recommendations · Beyond PLI

The 2026 incentive wave is deliberately not more PLI

A full sweep of the 2026 Cabinet-decision register — the first bulletin produced from this repo's PIB index rather than by browsing PIB — finds ~₹1.9 lakh crore of new commitments for sectors outside the 14 PLI sectors, built on missions, viability-gap funding, sovereign guarantees, credit backstops and plug-and-play land: de-risking inputs where PLI pays for output. Three of the four uncovered import heads this repo flagged received instruments this year; plastics and chemicals remain the holdouts.

SOURCE: data/pib_index.sqlite (9,657 releases, 2026 YTD) — all 'Cabinet approves…' rows, routine items excluded; outlays from each release's detail page. Every row carries its PRID. Retrieved 2026-07-19.

Import substitution — the gap-filling launches

The repo's uncovered import heads, one year later

Scheme	Outlay / instrument	Targets which gap	Read	PRID · date
Coal/Lignite Gasification Promotion	₹37,500cr	Mineral fuels & chem feedstocks (HS27 — 26.2% of the import bill; "nothing sized to its scale" in the gap analysis). PIB: "reducing dependence on imports of key products"; 100 MT by 2030	PARTIAL syngas, not crude	2260621 · 13 May
National Investment Policy for Urea-2026 (NIPU)	Investment policy — assured framework for new gas-based urea units	Fertilisers (HS31, +118.9% import growth — the fastest-growing uncovered head)	DIRECT	2284800 · 15 Jul
Mission for Aatmanirbharta in Pulses	₹11,440cr	Pulses self-sufficiency by 2030-31; 1,000 processing units approved	DIRECT	2241411 · 17 Mar
Mission for Cotton Productivity	₹5,659cr	Cotton fibre supply ("5F": farm→fibre→factory→fashion→foreign) — upstream of the declining cotton-apparel exports in PLI Textiles' blind spot	PARTIAL fibre, not apparel	2258111 · 5 May
— Plastics (HS39) · Inorganic chemicals (HS28) · Aircraft (HS88)	—	The chemicals PLI remains at formulation stage; aviation support (below) is demand-side only	STILL UNCOVERED	—

Trade enablers & horizontal factor-cost instruments

Paying for inputs and risk, not output

Scheme	Commitment	What it de-risks	PRID · date
Urban Challenge Fund	₹1,00,000cr	Urban infrastructure at 25% central assistance with mandatory ≥50% market leverage (→ ~₹4 lakh cr total) — the largest single 2026 commitment	2227986 · 14 Feb
BHAVYA (Bharat Audyogik Vikas Yojna)	₹33,660cr	100 plug-and-play industrial parks — aimed squarely at gate 3 (land + clearance) of this repo's lifecycle schema, the gate whose EC flow correlates 0.96 with implementation	2241785 · 18 Mar
NIIF additional commitment	₹30,000cr	Anchor capital for new NIIF infrastructure funds	2279107 · 29 Jun
Bharat Maritime Insurance Pool	₹12,980cr guarantee	Marine insurance for cargo "from any international origin" — quietly hardens the Russia crude lane (35.8–35.9% of crude imports) against insurance-market exclusion	2253242 · 18 Apr
Startup India Fund of Funds 2.0	₹10,000cr	Venture capital mobilization (SIDBI-managed)	2227988 · 14 Feb
SIDBI equity support	₹5,000cr	MSME-lender balance sheet (3 tranches to FY28)	2216720 · 21 Jan
ECLGS 5.0	100% / 90% guarantees	MSME + airline credit backstop via NCGTC, revived beyond its COVID origins	2258114 · 5 May
Export Promotion Mission — NIRYAT PROTSAHAN	Interest subvention	Pre/post-shipment export credit cost for MSME exporters — the export-side counterpart of a production payout	2210874 · 2 Jan
Vadinar Ship Repair Facility	₹1,570cr	Ship-repair import substitution (DPA + Cochin Shipyard)	2258115 · 5 May

Sector stabilizers in the same window: Modified UDAN ₹28,840cr over FY27–36 (PRID 2245096) and a one-time ₹10,000cr ATF price-stabilization support to OMCs for airlines (PRID 2268646) — aviation demand-side; Small Hydro ₹2,584.6cr for ~1,500 MW (PRID 2241799); NCR truck/bus fleet-replacement support (PRID 2268342). Policy gate: the FDI land-border-country amendment (PRID 2237806, 10 Mar) defines "Beneficial Owner" for Press Note 3 screening — the rule any China-linked JV (including ECMS component partnerships) must now clear.

Readings

What the register says when read together

Five readings, each checkable against the index

Revealed preference away from production-linked design. After ~15% PLI disbursal in five years (this repo's report card), 2026's new money pays for land (BHAVYA), credit (ECLGS/SIDBI/FoF), insurance (BMI pool), price risk (ATF fund) and viability gaps (gasification) — instruments that spend when investment happens, not when output does.
The gap analysis aged well: fuels, fertilisers, cotton and pulses — flagged here as uncovered — all received 2026 instruments. Plastics and inorganic chemicals are now the only large uncovered import heads, which sharpens action item #1 (launch the chemicals/plastics scheme).
BHAVYA is schema-aware policy: ₹33,660cr aimed at exactly the land+clearance gate whose EC-grant flow this repo showed predicts implementation (r = 0.96).
The BMI pool is trade-flow de-risking that will never appear in a scheme-utilization table — sovereign insurance capacity keeping the discounted-crude lane open.
Caveat per this repo's own rules: everything above is a gate-1 Cabinet commitment. None of it counts as delivered until it appears at gates 4–7; the quarterly refresh should track first tenders/disbursals of these schemes exactly as it tracks PLI.