Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharam shared that India is not going to witness any kind of slow down anytime soon. The government is doing its best to bring down the retail inflation rate to below 7 percent. When the topic of price rise came up in Lok Sabha , Sitharaman replied that the government had taken a number of steps to make raw material prices cheaper and reduce food inflation.
Sitharam further said that there is no question of India being hit by recession even if there is some informal recession in the US. He further said that even when international agencies like the World bank and the International Monetary Fund have reduced the rate of economies, India is still growing as the fastest growing economy.
Supporting this statement, she cited a Bloomberg survey that also recently found that the likelihood of India being hit by recession is zero.She said that India’s people have gone through a pandemic, and the state of the world market has affected India. Despite all of this, the Government and the Reserve Bank of India have taken several measures which have helped in maintaining a good condition compared to other countries.
Sitharaman said that, on one hand 4,000 Chinese banks are on the verge of bankruptcy . On the other, the NPAs of Indian commercial banks have come down to a six year low of 5.9 percent for FY22. When there is a triple digit debt-to-GDP ratio in many great economies, India’s central government ‘s debt to GDP ratio has fallen to 56.29% of GDP in FY2022 from the revised estimate of 59.9% of the same year. According to data from the International Monetary Fund, India is in a much better position compared to other countries. Other countries, on average, have debt on government which is 86.9% of GDP.
She said that the GST collection has passed the 1.4 lakh crore mark continuously for the last 5 months. India’s GST Collections were the second highest at Rs 1.49 trillion, which were above 1.4 trillion for the fifth consecutive month. Sitaraman acknowledges that India’s economy is booming. Eight infrastructure sectors grew by double digits in June.
Sitharaman compared India’s economic situation with the times in 2013. India was then considered one of the five weak economies. She said that the NDA government has kept inflation under control, and they are trying to keep the inflation below 7 %. Talking about the GST compensation cess, Sitharaman revealed that all payments to the state were done by May 22. She said they have a budgetary provision of Rs 12 trillion for FY23, out of which 87,00 crore payment has already been done to the states, while Rs 14,000 crore is being paid back-to-back for loans.. She said that the certificates from the Accountant General of some states is left, hence the compensation for June is pending.
