Bengaluru (Karnataka) [India], June 14 (ANI): Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Sunday said India faces risks from crude prices, West Asia tensions and Strait of Hormuz disruptions, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has ensured there is “not a supply disruption” for households and the economy.
She made the remarks at the Viksit Bharat event in Bengaluru while laying out India’s economic growth story.
Speaking on geopolitical challenges, Sitharaman said, “Even with the Middle East crisis, even with straight-up farmers causing a lot of disruption, and someday during my address, I will tell you the nature of risks and challenges. It is not just the cost of crude, it is not just the cost of LPG, it is also the problems that any country faces.”
She detailed shipping pressures linked to the Hormuz region and said, “You don’t get ships. The liners are not available because they don’t want to come with their costly ships and get it shot at. They don’t have containers to come into the port of others. Insurance companies don’t want to insure. So for an empty vessel to go, insurance has gone up because the ship will be fired at. When it comes filled with crude, again, crude and the ship, insurance premium goes up.”
“Despite all these challenges, Prime Minister Modi is ensuring that there shall not be a supply disruption. So that’s the kind of attention to the economy. That’s the kind of attention towards households,” the BJP leader and Union Minister noted.
On economic growth, Sitharaman pushed back against criticism of India’s performance. “There is no disaster awaiting India. On the contrary, quarter after quarter, year after year, not just we saying that we are the fastest growing, here is the number, GDP growth, you have IMF saying it once in April, May, which is a springtime assessment, and again in October time, we come up with the data to show why India is still the fastest growing economy, next year too, and so on. Year after year after 2020,” she said.
She cited welfare and poverty data as part of growth and mentioned 25 crore Indians came out of multidimensional poverty, with extreme poverty declining from 29.17 per cent in 2013-14 to 11.28 per cent. Twelve crore households got toilets and rural tap water connections rose from 3.23 crore in 2019 to 15.85 crore.
Sitharaman said the government is balancing infrastructure with human development despite global headwinds. “We have not missed out on the human elements as much as the infrastructure elements,” she said, adding that the 12-year story is about both development and welfare while navigating crude and logistics risks.
The Union Finance Minister outlined three “global-standard” revolutions currently reshaping India. The first she said was the Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) revolution.
Sitharaman hailed Bengaluru as the heart of the DPI movement. She noted that the JAM (Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile) trinity has achieved 58 crore Jan Dhan accounts and 144 crore Aadhaar identities.
“UPI today processes 2,100 crore transactions per month. No other country has achieved this scale. 86% of person-to-merchant payments are below Rs 500, showing that even street vendors in Shivaji Nagar are using the same digital rail as techies in Whitefield,” she said.
Second, she mentioned the ‘formalization revolution’ pointing out that GST registrations have jumped from 66.5 lakh in 2017 to 1.64 crore. Furthermore, 31 crore unorganized sector workers have registered on the e-Shram portal, and Mudra loans worth ₹40 lakh crore have been sanctioned, 66% of which went to women.
She also spoke about the welfare revolution through ‘saturation’. The Finance Minister emphasized the shift from mere “schemes” to “saturation,” ensuring every eligible person is covered. She cited 15.85 crore rural tap water connections, 10.5 crore free LPG connections under Ujjwala, and 81 crore citizens receiving free food grains. (ANI)
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