US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is visiting India. Today I had a meeting with Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, during which several important issues were discussed. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said India-US relations have developed into a global strategic partnership through more than 50 bilateral talks and their cooperation is broad and multi-sectoral.
Witness to the deepening of our economic and trade relations is that bilateral trade in goods between the two countries exceeded $100 billion in 2021, making it the largest volume of merchandise trade in economic history between India and the United States.
Seetraman said this
Bilateral defense trade between India and the United States has grown from zero nearly 12 years ago to more than $20 billion now. As our defense partnership develops, so does our defense industry, with innovation especially for India and the world, helping each other to advance development together and become leaders in production.
Finance Secretary Janet Yellen praises India
Addressing the US delegation headed by Finance Minister Janet Yellen, Sittraman emphasized on the occasion that India has emerged as a bright spot amid the global economic slowdown. You all know that the global economic outlook is still tough. According to the International Monetary Fund’s recently released World Economic Outlook (October 11, 2022), global economic activity is experiencing a broader and more severe slowdown than expected with higher inflation than it has been in several decades. The Indian economy has not been affected by the impact of global economic development. However, India bucked its growth trajectory buoyed by the above-normal southwest monsoon, public investment, a strong corporate balance sheet, upbeat consumer and business confidence, and the looming threat of a pandemic.
Sitharaman stresses the self-reliant India campaign
Sitharaman also enlisted several reform measures taken by the Government of India for self-reliance in India. We recognize that foreign capital inflows are an important component of India’s growth story, he said. Key reforms include simplifying and rationalizing foreign investor rules (FPI), increasing the overall foreign investment limit, introducing a Common Application Form (CAF) for recording FPIs, the Voluntary Retention Route (VRR), and the Full Access Route (FAR) such as opening new channels for debt investment. The success of these measures is reflected in the continuation of investment flows entering India through the FDI path. Notably, the US is the number one source of FPI investments in India, with US FPI (AUC) assets approaching $234 billion as of September 30, 2022.
