Goyal started his career as an investment banker and served on the board of India's largest commercial banks, the State Bank of India 2001-2004 and Bank of Baroda 2002-2004 as Government nominee. Piyush was a member of the Standing Committee on Finance and the Consultative Committee for the Ministry of Defence. An active member of the Managing Committee of Indian Merchants Chamber, he is also involved with NGOs in diverse fields such as tribal education and welfare of the physically challenged. During his 35-year-long political career, he has served on the National Executive and held several important positions in the BJP including the national treasurer. He was also nominated by the Government of India to the Task Force for Interlinking of Rivers. He was the Dy. Campaign In-charge for the Parliament elections in 1991 and played a key role at the central level in all elections since 2004. He was elected as the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate from Maharashtra for the Rajya Sabha in 2010.
Goyal became the Minister of State for Power, Coal, New and Renewable Energy in the Modi government in 2014 and undertook multiple initiatives in his term. He accelerated the mission to provide 24X7 reliable electricity to all households and pushed towards the adoption of clean energy. He introduced the Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojana to revive debt-ridden power distribution companies and Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana to improve India's energy access. He successfully auctioned the coal blocks after the much talked about Coal scam of the previous government. He initiated and completed the government program to electrify all the 18,000 remaining unelectrified villages of the country. He was awarded the 2018 Carnot Prize for distinguished contributions to energy policy and work in village electrification by the University of Pennsylvania’s Kleinman Center for Energy Policy. He also worked for energy efficiency in the country through the Unnat Jyoti by Affordable Lighting for All scheme and reduced the prices of LED bulbs to per piece from in 2014. He revised the Government's target of 20 GW of solar power by 2022 to five times. On 5 July 2016, during the second cabinet reshuffle of the Modi ministry, he was included in the cabinet and took over as the Minister of State for Mines from Narendra Singh Tomar.
Minister of Railways
He became the Minister of Railways on 3 September 2017 taking charge from Suresh Prabhu. On 27 February 2019, Piyush Goyal announced a Railway Zone for Andhra Pradesh named South Coast Railway with Waltair Division in Andhra Pradesh along with Guntur, Guntakal and Vijayawada Divisions with the headquarters of the zone being in Visakhapatnam, according to the AP Reorganisation Act 2014. From May through August 2018, he was temporarily given additional charge of Ministry of Finance during Arun Jaitley's absence for medical treatment. Goyal presented the 2019 Interim-Union budget of India in the Lok Sabha on 1 February 2019.
Piyush Goyal was trolled for his comments about India's GDP numbers and economic slowdown, when he said "Don’t get into those maths. Those maths have never helped Einstein discover gravity". Goyal later called it a mistake. In 2017, Goyal tweeted a photo of a Russian street as an example of Indian street-lighting programme, he later deleted the tweet.
