Key Details
The National Statistics Office’s (NSO) CAPEX 2026 survey is the third round of its Forward-Looking Survey on Private Corporate Sector CAPEX Investment Intentions. It covers selected large private enterprises, not the entire private sector.
Timing: Responses will be collected from October to December 2026.
What firms report: Recent capital expenditure, provisional spending in the current financial year and plans for the forthcoming year, broken down by industry and asset type.
What else is covered: Investment objectives, financing sources, strategies, and spending on green energy and robotics.
How firms respond: Through a secure online portal with a bilingual questionnaire and reporting guidance. NSO says individual enterprises’ data will remain confidential.
The previous round found that manufacturing accounted for 50.17% of provisional capital expenditure reported for 2025–26 among the surveyed principal activity categories. For a fixed panel of 3,819 enterprises, NSO also compared investment intentions with subsequent expenditure.
The Survey Looks Ahead as Well as Back
Capital expenditure (CAPEX) is spending on longer-lived assets such as buildings, machinery and equipment. Unlike statistics that record investment after it occurs, CAPEX 2026 asks firms what they intend to spend next. Repeating the survey allows NSO to compare those plans with later reported expenditure and assess how dependable the signals are.
Earlier Results Show the Value and Limit of Intentions
In CAPEX 2025, manufacturing represented the largest share of provisional 2025–26 spending, at ₹5,73,900 crore. Information and communication followed at 16.38%, and electricity, gas, steam and air-conditioning supply at 8.96%.
NSO reported a 96.3% realisation ratio for the surveyed enterprises’ 2024–25 expenditure, indicating that actual spending was broadly aligned with earlier intentions in aggregate. That does not mean every firm or sector followed its plan. Nor should findings from selected large enterprises be read as a measure of all private investment.
Policy Relevance
CAPEX 2026 could give policymakers an earlier view of which sectors and assets are attracting large-firm investment, including whether green-energy and robotics plans translate into spending. Its usefulness will depend on timely responses and on comparing intentions with subsequent outcomes, rather than treating announced plans as completed investment.
Relevant Question for Policy Stakeholders: Which planned investments are most consistently realised—and where do firms’ spending plans diverge from what they eventually undertake?
Follow the Full Press Release Here: NSO’s CAPEX 2026 Survey Announcement