New Delhi: In the eight years of BJP rule, foreign direct investment into India has been 65% higher than what the Congress-led UPA managed during its 10 years, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told Parliament on Tuesday.
Sitharaman told Rajya Sabha: “In the seven years and nine months of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government – till December 2021 – FDI inflow into India has been $500.5 billion.”
The finance minister was speaking during a discussion on the Appropriation Bill, 2022 and the Finance Bill, 2022.
Sitharaman said a report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) showed that nearly 32 countries increased various taxes during the pandemic. “We didn’t. In spite of all speculation, no tax was increased to fund or aid our recovery process,” she said in the Upper House Tuesday.
The finance minister said the war in Russia and Ukraine has added to the pressure that subsequent Covid waves heaped on the economy.
She said: “Now we are also facing the situation of a full-blown war in Ukraine which is not some war in some corner of the world… it seems to be having an impact on all countries like the way the pandemic has.”
She said the war has caused a disruption to supplies. “The value chains are all broken. Newer markets are emerging and at the same time old markets are caught up in a situation where nothing is normal,” Sitharaman said.
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