Highlights from Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's comments on B20 Summit India 2023

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman while addressing the B20 Summit in Delhi on August 25 said that the current government led by Prime Minister Modi has been consistently carrying out reforms for the past nine years with stable results, while reforms carried by earlier governments were erratic.

She added that sustained global economic recovery will be a key issue for the next few years as the world economy recovers from the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukraine-Russia war.

Highlights of her speech at the B20 Summit :

• Everyone who I have met has said that the B20 Summit is a huge affair


• Sustained global economic recovery will be a key issue for the next few years


• Sustaining economic growth is not only hard because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Russia-Ukraine war but also because of climate change issues and switching to green fuels


• Each individual economy has its own peculiarities when trying to achieve sustained economic recovery


• Everybody feels that the GDP numbers for Q1FY24 will be good


• The Indian government has shown accelerated willingness to implement reforms in the last 9 years


• Capital expenditure has gone up from 12.3 percent in FY18 to 22.4 percent in FY24


• The central government has encouraged state governments to increase capital expenditure


• State capital expenditure in Q1FY24 has increased by 74.3 percent when compared on year


• Central government capital expenditure in Q1FY24 has increased by 59.1 percent when compared on year


• Private capital expenditure has seen a boost behind the central and state governments' capital expenditure


• The key priority for economic growth is containing inflation


• Elevated interest rate to curb inflation can curb economic growth


• Increased expenditure in infrastructure growth is another key to sustained economic growth


• The central and state governments' capital expenditure push is creating green shoots of investment from the private sector


• Investment in health and education is very important to maintain economic growth


• Investment in climate change finance is another key area to maintain economic growth


• Diversification of supply chains is another key area to maintain economic growth


• The world economy cannot survive another jolt in global supply chains


• Free Trade Agreements with the UK is expected to be announced soon


• FTA with the UK, Canada and EFTA countries: We are continually making efforts for it along with the commerce ministry. The speed it is going now is this year we should conclude the agreement in the FTA, the FM said


• FTA with the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) is also in the works


• EFTA includes Liechtenstein, Norway, Iceland and Switzerland