Conspiracy to damage India's image of safe investment destination: FM

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday cautioned about a conspiracy to send a message that India is not safe for foreign investors and that Indian institutions cannot guarantee security to foreign investments.

“There is a conspiracy to send a message to the entire world that India is not safe for investors. This is not good. Rumours are being spread that Indian institutions cannot guarantee security to foreign investments, which is really a sad situation,” Sitharaman said while replying to the general discussion on the FY25 Budget in the Lok Sabha.

Sitharaman said entrepreneurship itself was being made a villain. “Hardworking entrepreneurs are building this country. The conspiracy is to end India’s entrepreneurship culture even before it fully blooms, thereby hitting at India’s core backbone, which is India’s entrepreneurship of small and medium units and enterprises that are building India. Negativity is being spread in society towards all those who do business, and this hatred for business and wealth creators is spilling everywhere,” she added.

To make India developed, Sitharaman said it was necessary to be a big economic and strategic power. “But if there will be instability and anarchy in the country, the journey towards Viksit Bharat will become more difficult. This is a huge challenge for us and as a nation, we have to understand where the problem is. India’s social fabric, parliamentary traditions, economy, and armed forces — all four are severely attacked,” she said.

Questioning the credibility of the Global Hunger Index, which ranked India at 111th position out of a total of 125 countries in 2023, Sitharaman termed it a flawed indicator. “How come conflict-ridden countries, such as Pakistan and Sudan, are ranked ahead of India? African countries still have lower per capita income than India. In Pakistan, they are not able to obtain basic food, though I don’t want them to suffer. But that’s the reality. And here in India, we provide free food grains to 80 crore people, and still we are high in the hunger index! How will they establish credibility,” she asked.

Answering questions on household savings dipping to a 50-year low while household debt has increased, Sitharaman said net financial savings of the household sector have risen 70 per cent from Rs 8.32 trillion in FY14 to Rs 14.16 trillion in FY23. “Under household savings in the form of physical assets, construction of houses or other immovable properties increased from Rs 14 trillion in FY14 to Rs 35 trillion in FY23. It clearly indicates a shift of savings in the form of physical assets rather than in the form of financial assets. The base of registered investors at the National Stock Exchange has tripled to 92 million between March 2020 and March 2024. Now, potentially 20 per cent of India’s households are channeling their household savings into financial markets,” she added.

Sitharaman said the Budget FY25 tries to bring a balance among several objectives because growth is important, and through better growth and higher growth, inequality can be addressed. “So growth, employment, welfare spending, capital investment, and fiscal consolidation—these are the factors which we tried balancing in the Budget,” she added.