India to witness steepest rise in living standards on govt’s efforts to double per capital income: Sitharaman
Inequality in India has declined with the Gini coefficient, a statistical tool to measure inequity, showing improvement in urban as well as rural areas
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Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said that India will witness the steepest rise in living standards of the common man on the back of the government’s initiatives and the efforts towards doubling per capita income in few years. She stressed that inequality in India has declined with the Gini coefficient, a statistical tool to measure inequity, showing improvement in urban as well as rural areas.
Sitharaman expects these improvements to continue as the effects of the last ten years of economic and structural reforms manifest more thoroughly in the data in the coming years as the Covid shock fades from the economy. She said the upcoming decades will see the steepest rise in living standards for the common man, truly making it a period-defining era for an Indian to live in. She said ‘while it took us 75 years to reach a per capita income of $2,730, as per IMF projections, it will take only five years to add another $2,000’. The upcoming decades will see the steepest rise in living standards for the common man, truly making it a period-defining era for an Indian to live in.
The minister said the Indian government will try to double the per capita income in a matter of a few years for its 1.4 billion strong population (which makes up 18 per cent of the global total) notwithstanding the geopolitical challenges threatening world peace. By 2047, as India crosses the 100-year mark of independence, she said the new Indian era will have core characteristics similar to developed countries. Viksit Bharat will usher prosperity not just to Indians but to the rest of the world by becoming central to a vibrant exchange of ideas, technology, and culture. Talking on the country’s financial system, she said the soundness and resilience of India’s banking sector have been underpinned by a sustained policy focus on asset quality improvements, enhanced provisioning for bad loans, sustained capital adequacy, and a rise in profitability. NPA (non-performing asset) ratios are at a multi-year low, and banks now have efficient debt recovery mechanisms.