Inflation is not a ‘red lettered’ priority for Centre now, says FM Nirmala Sitharaman
The HinduInflation is not a ‘red-lettered’ priority now for the government given that it has been brought down to a ‘manageable level’ over the past two months and job creation and equitable distribution of wealth were instead the key priorities as of now, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Wednesday. “I am not sure I can have the luxury of sequencing priorities, several things will have to happen simultaneously,” Ms. Sitharaman said, speaking at the U.S. India Business Council’s annual general meeting titled ‘India Ideas Summit’. Ms. Sitharaman exuded confidence that the Reserve Bank of India, which is ‘fairly clued in’ to global developments arising from the steps taken by the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, would be able to handle the monetary policy challenges ‘without major blips and rise and falls’. Asserting that India’s economy was now the fifth largest in the world and would ‘soon’ be the third largest, the minister said that India and the United States could account for 30% of the global economy if the two worked together over the next 20 years to become an engine of global growth.