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India stands as the world's fastest-growing major economy, offering investors a blend of scale, sustained growth, a youthful population, increasing consumption, and expanding capital markets, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told Canadian business leaders in Toronto. She emphasized that for long-term Canadian investors, India presents a combination difficult to rival - scale, ongoing growth, a burgeoning youth demographic, rising consumption, and rapidly advancing capital markets.

Sitharaman highlighted India's transformation as structural, fueled by rapid urbanization, a burgeoning middle class, and world-class digital infrastructure, creating new opportunities across virtually every sector. She underscored the role of India's digital ecosystem in making financial and commercial services more accessible and affordable, with the country's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) being the world's largest real-time payments system, significantly enhancing financial inclusion, efficiency, and innovation.

The finance minister noted that Canada and India have a growing economic partnership, with the Indian diaspora in Canada acting as a strategic bridge between the two nations. She pointed out that Indian Canadians are present in Canadian boardrooms, on Bay Street's trading floors, and within pension funds' risk committees. She also mentioned that India-Canada bilateral ties have undergone a remarkable change, backed by shared democratic and pluralistic values, expanding economic engagement, high-level engagements, and strong people-to-people ties.

The relationship between the two countries was further cemented by the agreement between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the G7 Summit in June 2025, reaffirming their commitment to a strategic partnership focused on the future. This was further solidified during Prime Minister Carney's recent visit to India, where they launched Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) negotiations, a CAD 2.6 billion uranium agreement with Cameco, adopted Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam as the overarching framework of the renewed strategic partnership, and declared ambition to double two-way trade to CAD 70 billion by 2030.