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New Delhi: Hours after presenting her first Union Budget on Friday, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in a conversation with CNBC TV18 said that measures taken in the Budget are expected to put in place a series of “virtuous investment”.
“This Budget should kick-start the virtuous cycle of investment,” she said.
Elaborating on the road ahead for investments in India, Sitharaman stressed that public investment in infrastructure will continue and scope for further investment will go beyond roads and airports.
Similar thoughts were expressed by chief economic adviser KV Subramanian in his debut Economic Survey tabled in the Parliament on Thursday.
“In order to trigger this virtuous cycle, we have to rely on some of these foreign savings. They can come in and start investment, and once this happens, that will enhance productivity, which creates jobs, fosters exports and thereby, demand,” he had said.
Meanwhile, Sitharaman in the same interview said she was glad that the Reserve Bank of India was also working in tandem with the government on solving the NBFC (non-banking financial company) crisis.
“We have given RBI powers to resolve crisis for NBFCs if they can’t do it themselves. I have taken steps to address NBFCs with problems of governance. Decisions aimed to help NBFCs was taken after consultation with experts,” she said.
Sitharaman started her day with doing away with the traditional brown briefcase that all of her male counterparts have used to carry budget documents in. Instead, she carried a traditional four-fold red cloth, the kind often seen in the hands of Indian traders and also used to wrap religious texts.
Red-coloured 'bahi-khata' (ledger) notebooks are considered auspicious for money matters in Indian traditions and the traders keep their account files in these notebooks to bring in prosperity and as a means to worship the goddess of wealth.
“I wanted to get out of the colonial hangover by dropping the briefcase. It was my family’s suggestion to drop the briefcase,” she said.
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