When the entire world is going through a period of political uncertainty, India is seen as a growth centre, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Tuesday.
“Even today, India remains a growth engine for the global economy. India has proven its resilience in the most difficult situations,” he said while addressing the budget webinars to hard sell the country’s growth story.
The prime minister argued that the Indian growth story was a result of the consistency of government policies. “Every country in the world wants to strengthen its economic partnership with India. Our manufacturing sectors should come forward to take maximum advantage of this partnership.”
The webinars are organised to bring government officials, industry leaders, and trade experts to deliberate on India’s industrial, trade, and energy strategies.
The prime minister asked the Indian industry to rise up to the occasion and not remain mere spectators as the world needs reliable partners from where high-quality products can come out and the supply was reliable.
“In the last 10 years, India has continuously shown its commitment towards reforms, financial discipline, transparency and inclusive growth. Consistency and assurance of reforms is such a change that has brought new confidence within our industry,” Modi said.
The prime minister revealed that the government was in the process of bringing Jan Vishwas 2.0 as it would look at further reducing the compliances. Already more than 40,000 compliances have been abolished at the centre and the state level. This has promoted ease of doing business.
The government has set up a committee to review the regulations of the non-financial sector in order to make them modern, flexible, and people-friendly.
Referring to the government initiatives, the prime minister said 14 sectors were covered under the PLI scheme in which over 750 units have been approved. All this has brought an investment of more than ₹ 1.5 lakh crore, production of more than ₹ 13 lakh crore and export of more than ₹ 5 lakh crore.
As the NDA government’s focus has been on pushing the MSME sector, Modi said the definition of MSMEs has been further expanded to instil confidence among the business community. Even the difficulty in obtaining loans by the MSMEs has been addressed. He added that ten years ago, MSMEs received loans worth approximately ₹12 lakh crore, which has now increased to around ₹30 lakh crore. The prime minister announced that in this budget, the guarantee cover for MSME loans has been doubled to Rs 20 crore.