New Delhi, July 7 -- India's macroeconomic resilience offers a unique window to deepen manufacturing, push exports, and formalise strategic trade partnerships amid slowing global growth, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) president Rajiv Memani told Mint in an interview. "India has been the fastest-growing large economy in the world for the last three years, something that hasn't happened before," Memani said. "I think we are standing at a really strong position. Growth is important, but also equally important is how strong your (corporate) balance sheet is. And India's balance sheet, at multiple levels, is very healthy," he added. Memani pointed to reduced fiscal deficit, strong banking sector health, and a vibrant capital market, asserting that "the strength of the institutional framework of India, the political and policy stability, if I compare with most markets in the world, it's very strong". To be sure, India's fiscal deficit, a shortfall in a government's income compared with its spending, has improved significantly-from 9.3% of GDP in FY21, when pandemic-related spending surged, to 4.8% in FY25. As part of the government's fiscal consolidation glide path, the centre is targeting a fiscal deficit of 4.4% of GDP in the current financial year 2025-26. While India's services exports remain robust, Memani emphasised the need for a sharper manufacturing strategy. "If you look at countries that had breakout growth, Germany, Japan, Korea, China, a lot of it was driven by manufacturing exports. India has to pivot more strongly to manufacturing from where we are," he said. Acknowledging China's dominance in global manufacturing, Memani said that India must identify and focus on its own areas of strength-such as electronics, semiconductors, defence, and labour-intensive sectors-to carve out a competitive edge. "There is massive competition from China. Obviously, they have been at this for a long time and developed some very deep competencies," he said. "So we have to find our own (sweet spots), where we can dominate," he added. On domestic investment trends, Memani noted that public capital expenditure-particularly the central government's infrastructure-led growth push-continues to outpace private sector capex. However, he pointed out that private investments are gaining momentum in select sectors, with some witnessing a more aggressive pickup than others. "There are lots of new sectors opening up... in electronics, semiconductors, aerospace and defence, you are seeing new capex happening. Cement has a lot of brownfield expansion. But yes, MSMEs need to accelerate," he said....