
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman described the Budget delivered last month as “special” because it gives a window for India to commemorate its 100th year of independence over the next 25 years.
“We understood the strength and that has been manifested in very clear ways in that for a country during the pandemic, with all the lockdown and its restrictions, you still could manage 42 or 45 Unicorns within two years,” she said at the annual summit of the India Global Forum.
She also stated that the ministry has embraced the idea that capital expenditure through public infrastructure construction alone will be the sole way to hasten the economy’s restoration. The goal, according to the minister, is to build a nation with technologically advanced facilities.
“Through our Budget, we wanted to give every facilitation that these start-ups require and to make sure that the basic framework and fundamentals of the infrastructure are in place, whether it is optical fibre, a necessary framework for industrial revolution 4.0 or investments, we have announced all of that in this year,” she added.
In response to a question on the issue that every finance minister across the world has in reviving private consumption, Sitharaman stated, “I see that private consumption has already sort of picked up significantly. It can pick up more is a different issue but for us to pretend that private consumption has to be addressed separately as different from addressing the supply side issues is also trying to ignore the fact that the economy is not a watertight compartment. When you give a good substantial push to a supply-driven solution, the benefits of that accrue to the demand side too.”
She added, “The way in which an economy like India addresses its demand-side issues is also to look at the bottom-most layer of our population, which has several disadvantages. You need to ensure that they don’t remain hungry. We need to give them food. We need to ensure that they’re not uncertain about the food requirements that they and their family may have and also meet their emergency expenditures which arise out of let’s say health situations.”
In response to queries about the government’s stance on cryptocurrency, the minister stated that the government’s stance on cryptocurrencies will be announced when the ongoing consultation process will complete.