India eyes key supply-chain role as firms shift from China: FM Sitharaman
2 min read . Updated: 11 Apr 2023, 06:37 AM IST
Premium- Citing the production-linked incentive schemes, FM Nirmala Sitharaman said it covers 13 manufacturing sectors including semiconductors which are bringing global value chains into India
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her latest remark expressed India could be an alternative to China in world supply chains.
Citing the production-linked incentive schemes (PLI), she said it covers 13 manufacturing sectors including semiconductors which are bringing global value chains into India.
And, through this, she hoped India can attain production of many of these large, bulk-manufactured goods that can be exported globally to meet international and local demand.
The Finance Minister was speaking at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. She is on a weeklong trip to the US to attend the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s Spring Meetings.
Sitharaman gave the example of mobile-phone manufacturing — the Asian nation 2014 produced very few devices and the industry had grown to become one of the world’s biggest exporters.
G-20 and Debt
India holds the presidency of the Group of 20 intergovernmental forums of influential nations. Sitharaman said it "is a great opportunity for India to prove and to work towards bringing all countries together on substantive issues". India is under pressure to show it can forge an agreement after major meetings this year ended with Russia and China objecting to language around the war in Ukraine.
The FM added, "It is time that the members of the G-20 sit up and take these issues on board,
singling out the need to provide debt relief for more than 70 low-income nations facing a collective $326 billion burden.
More than half of the world’s low-income countries are at high risk of debt distress or are already in it, and several have defaulted. But despite the G-20 largest economies having agreed in 2020 to a plan called the Common Framework to smooth the process of restructuring loans that governments could no longer afford to service or repay, not a single nation has actually gotten relief under it so far.
“This issue will be taken forward, and I hope to have some positive movements," Sitharaman concluded.