‘GIFT City gateway for developed nation tag’

The government is positioning the GIFT City as the gateway for financial and investment hub, besides offering a platform for green credits and building diverse fintech laboratory to achieve the target of India’s economy becom-ing $30 trillion by 2047.

Outlining this vision on Thursday at the 10th Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit 2024, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman highlighted the growing presence of operations at the International Financial Services Centres (IFSC) and the three exchanges including the International Bullion Exchange, 25 banks, including 9 foreign banks, 26 aircraft lesser, 80 fund managers, 50 professional service providers and 40 fintech entities in the GIFT City.
Sitharaman also said that the direct listing of stocks at the IFSC in GIFT City would happen soon to enable Indian companies to access global funds easily. “We are going through the process in a very systematic manner and I’m confident it will happen at the earliest,” Sitharaman said.

The idea of GIFT City was conceptualised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi way back in 2007 as Chief Minister of Gujarat and it has since expanded into a major international financial hub. “The GIFT City should be the place for finance and technology related entrepreneurs. We aim to build a diverse FinTech laboratory for the world and ad-dress the three broad needs – Indian fintech firms wanting to go global should be here, foreign fintech firms who want to come to India and Indian fintech firms aiming to grow their business and who would want to work within a regulatory sandbox.

The Finance Minister further said India should aim to become manufacturing hub for shipping and there are 8 ship leasing entities working in IFSC that would enable access to global finance. Retail participation in stock markets in India is another distinct feature of the financial sector reforms initiated by the government, Sitharaman noted, pointing out that the fusion of technology and financial world in the GIFT City offers advantages to India’s entre-preneurs in accessing global finance.