Ahead of the Budget Session, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the Houses in Parliament on Thursday, and talked about the historic India-EU free trade agreement (FTA) inked this week, as well as welfare schemes aimed at uplifting the marginalised.
“Our priority is always human-centric while taking steps for all-round development of the country,” the prime minister said to reporters in the Parliament House complex in his customary briefing at the beginning of the Budget session.
The nation, he said, is emerging from long-term pending problems and working towards finding long-term solutions. “Time has come to find solutions and not create hurdles,” the PM said, adding his government is not confined to just files but ensuring last mile delivery of welfare schemes to the people.
On the “milestone” FTA signed with the European Union, PM Modi said the pact is for an ambitious India that is full of confidence. “An India full of confidence has emerged as [a] ray of hope for world,” he added.
Urging manufacturers to benefit from new markets opening for them, he said the new market “offers quality products to 27 EU member nations”.
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India and the EU on Tuesday announced the conclusion of negotiations for the FTA, described as ‘mother of all deals’, under which 93 per cent of Indian shipments will enjoy duty-free access to the 27-nation bloc, while import of luxury cars and wines from the EU will become less expensive.
The deal, concluded after negotiations spanning about two decades, will create a market of about two billion people across the world’s fourth-largest economy, India, and the second-largest economic bloc, the EU.
Referring to President Droupadi Murmu’s address to the joint sitting of both Houses of Parliament on Wednesday, PM Modi said it was an expression of confidence of 140 crore citizens and outlined aspirations of the youth.
He also noted that Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is going to table her ninth consecutive budget on Sunday, and that it is a “very glorious chapter of Indian democracy” that she is the only woman finance minister in the country to achieve such a significant feat.
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