IANS | 23 Mar, 2024
Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur on Friday said
that India will become the third-largest economy in the world in the
next three years.
Speaking at the Viksit Bharat Ambassador (VBA)
meet-up programme here, the Union Minister said that in a span of 10
years, since Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government came to power
at the Centre in 2014, the Indian economy has turned from fragile five
to top five.
The Union Minister said that during the regime of
the previous UPA government, there were a lot of corruption cases but
since 2014, it was a clean government that Prime Minister Narendra Modi
has been leading.
He also said that during the UPA rule, the
Indian economy was among the five fragile economies of the world and in
the bracket of South Africa, Brazil, Indonesia and Turkey even when an
economist (an oblique reference to former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh)
was heading the country.
He, however, said that the former Prime
Minister was under remote control, indirectly referring to Congress
leader Sonia Gandhi.
He said that the country had then high inflation rates, debt rates, policy paralysis and this was mainly due to misgovernance.
The
Union Minister said that the GDP rate has now gone up from 4.5 per cent
to 8.5 per cent which was the highest in the world and at the same
time, inflation has come down to 6.7 per cent now.
The FDI has increased from $35 billion to $85 billion and exports have increased from $300 billion to $770 billion.
Anurag
Thakur also said that the 'Pradhan Manti Mudra Loan Yojana' was one of
the major driving forces that boosted the economy, adding 65 per cent of
the beneficiaries from the scheme were women.
He said that during earlier days, 430 million people were not associated with the banking system.
In
two years, PM Modi's government opened 43 crore bank accounts for the
people, Anurag Thakur said, adding this was done in two years --
something the Congress-led government could not do in so many years.
The
Union Minister said that during the erstwhile Congress rule, as
pilferage was huge, the money was not reaching the beneficiaries.
"However, PM Modi used technology, Department of Telecom and linked
Aadhaar and Jan Dhan accounts and money was reaching the beneficiaries
100 per cent," he said.
Anurag Thakur also said that every Indian
is now secured under the 'Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana' which
was never there before 2014.
The Union Minister also said that PM Modi-led government has provided 4 crore houses to the poorest of the poor.
