Centre's intention is to make business landscape easy, facilitative: Nirmala Sitharaman

While addressing the inaugural session of the CII Global Economic Policy Summit 2021, Sitharaman said, "It is the collective effort of all key stakeholders and also those on the ground which has enabled India to stand up to the challenges imposed by COVID and bounce back to near about double-digit growth."

"If ship and chip shortage had not been there, growth would have been even higher," she stated.

The Finance Minister emphatically urged the industry to seize the opportunities presented by Atmanirbhar Bharat, ramp up capacities, create job opportunities and empower people with skill sets.

She requested India Inc to venture into new areas, find partners to upgrade technologically, invest in infrastructure and adopt a growth-oriented focus. "Amidst these, the Government's intention is to make the business landscape easy and facilitative," she added.

"The spike in consumer spending suggests not just pent up demand, but indicates that life is getting restored after a crisis of this scale," the Finance Minister said, adding the labour market also indicates the presence of semi-skilled and high skilled labour who value their skill sets and are in a position to bargain, while looking for employment.

Finance Minister outlined some of the priority areas for the government which include infrastructure building and technology driven infrastructure. "Rs 5.5 lakh crores are allocated for infrastructure with 134 per cent increase in health infrastructure," she added.

Fintech and Bharat Net are reaching the farthest corners of the country which present collateral benefits for growth. Start-ups and new-age technology will make a big difference to the economy, she mentioned.

Minister said, "Initiatives taken up by Public Sector Banks (PSBs) showed an outstanding performance by earning profit in the first half of this financial year, nearly equal to that of the last full financial year. Facilitated by sustained recovery efforts, PSBs efficiently brought down the Net NPA to 2.9 per cent for the quarter ending September 2021, which is the lowest in seven years."

Drives taken up by Scheduled Commercial Banks (SCBs) resulted in a significant increase in credit growth from 5.1 per cent in September 2020 to 6.8 per cent in September 2021, the Ministry of Finance and Corporate Affairs said in a release.

As per the Ministry, PSBs raised market equity to a notable amount of over Rs 10,000 crore in the first half of this financial year, almost equal to that of the last financial year. During the nationwide Credit Outreach Programme between October 16, and November 7, Rs 76,011.79 crore worth of loans were sanctioned to 17,51,326 (17.5 lakh) accounts across the country.