FM Nirmala Sitharaman stresses India's need to invest in technology and trade to lead global economic growth amid shifting global order
New Delhi: Emphasising India’s potential to lead the global technology landscape, Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday said that India must prioritise investment in technology and talent to secure its position at the forefront of global economic growth. “Global order would not be determined by developed countries, while trade and technology will play a crucial role in the new world order and India will need to participate,” she said while speaking at the BS Manthan conference here in the capital.
As the Centre is making all its efforts to make India move up the ladder and be an engine of global growth, Sitharaman also said that India needs to ramp up its bilateral relations for trade and investment, as the world is witnessing a churn, and bilateralism seems to be the new catalyst tool. “Besides, states should feel part of the call for reforms. States are part of India’s larger economy, which will take us forward,” the finance minister said.
Observing that multilateral institutions are increasingly fading away, she said, every attempt to revive them and energise them is not having the desired result. “So, where you have to address issues which affect more than your own country. You have no more forums left which can effectively deliver. Multilateral institutions and their contributions probably are fading away, at least in the near future, till an attempt is made to revive them with that kind of energy... It's not going to happen in the next few years,” she said.
Asserting that global trade is undergoing a complete reset, she said that the terms and references with which all of us played trade, with some kind of an anchor in the World Trade Organization are no longer available. “There is no most favoured nation or MFN concept and every country wants to be treated special, and every country wants to be sure that special treatment that they get is not by default. So if the WTO is getting weakened or multilateral institutions are not being effective. Some bilateral arrangements are going to be the order of the day in terms of trade,” she said.