Providing affordable energy to a large population while maintaining nationally committed climate targets poses a new challenge for India amid a global uncertainty over availability of crude and natural gas lingers.
At the India Ideas Summit organised by the U.S.-India Business Council, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman explained her concerns over how coal dependency will have to be cut down again as energy challenges have cropped up globally.
The global uncertainty over energy, she said, has jolted India's transition plans and posed a threat to energy security of the world. The challenge (of energy transition) would be particularly onerous for India because of the size of the population and the different levels of development, she said.
The summit also sparked discussions on critical topics relevant to India and the U.S. such as the digital payments system, the indigenous technology stack, and the efforts to encourage foreign investments.
“In the last eight years, I've seen that there's been an interactive and pointed relationship (between India and U.S.) in terms of understanding compulsions, challenges and the potential that exists,” Sitharaman said.
Inflation Not A Red-Lettered Priority
The Indian central bank, Sitharaman said, is “clued in” to the latest development and inflation is not a “red-lettered priority”.
Irrespective of the steps taken by the central banks around the world, she said, the Reserve Bank of India is clued in to the developments and is confident of handling Indian monetary policy without major blips.
On the government's capital formation agenda, she said a review of the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund that hadn't captured much interest earlier was in order.
“With capital formation and investments not just from Indian investors but also abroad, we've given particular attention on what fiscal concessions can be made on large sovereign funds,” she said. “We've also engaged with them (investors) and the NIIF was one such attempt… I would like it to be a lot more robust.”
The minister also pushed for greater collaboration between the two countries and for globalising India's technology-stack. India's indigenous ONDC (Open Network for Digital Commerce) was also referenced as a revolutionary initiative that will have a huge impact on India's retail and manufacturing consumers.
India will next host the G-20 from December 2022. The event is expected to draw greater attention to the role of emerging economies and their solutions for global concerns.
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