25 regional airstrips to be added this year: Jaitley

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today said India needs airports of global quality and 25 regional airstrips will be added this year.
"Logically there is no reason that airports and airlines in India should not do well. We have amongst largest number of people in the world, we have a large number of expatriate, we have economy which can legitimately claim the fasted growing economy of the world," he said.
Jaitley said there a very large section of people who uses airport as a hub for their activity and its "obvious that India need airport of global quality".
During this year alone, the Finance Minister said, the government has ambitious target of adding 25 regional airports to the already functional 70 airports.

"Time is not very far of when we look at country one of the few in the world which will have functional airports which will be literally in three digits," he said at a function organised by Delhi Airport.
The Public Private Partnership (PPP) of Delhi Airport has completed 10 years and it has been a learning experience, he said, adding that it also shows India's gradual progress story.

Citing examples of airports in Gulf countries, he said airports play a significant role in globalisation, connecting cities and countries encouraging international commerce and tourism.
Besides, Jaitley said the Railways is modernising 400 stations with participation of private players and make it hubs of commercial activity.

In seaports also private participation is helping government ports to turn around, he said.
Jaitley said the most important event in Indian history
in the last 100 years has been India's independence and that changed the course of history.
"It (independence) was accompanied by pain, the largest migration of population for years as people were rehabilitated. When you are changing the mode of payment, of course this is a very small incident compared to that.
"And therefore when you see the long-term impact we must all assess that it is going to change the mode of doing business, it is going to change the mode of undertaking expenditure," he said.

Jaitley said there was a need to push digital transactions as of the 80 crore debit and credit cards in the banking system, only 45 crore is being actively used.
Jaitley said after years of witnessing policy paralysis, India has emerged as the fastest growing major economy in the world.
"For two years we have been continued to be fastest, I have no doubt that we will continue to be so this year. Few years from now we hope to evolve from a developing emerging economy to a developed economy," he said.
Jaitley further said that over the last 70 years, India has witnessed an extremely comfortable relationship between policy planners, business and trade and citizens and the normal Indian life saw two components of payments being discussed in real estate and few other sectors.

"This had almost become the normal and for a government to try and disturb this normal, obviously is disruptionist. For governments, Prime Ministers to just look the other way was also the normal. And therefore the situation which has continued for almost seven decades, would have continued indefinitely.
"But this so-called seven decade normal had to be disrupted. And it had to be disrupted because a normal for any society can't be this normal which existed," Jaitley said.