Nirmala Sitharaman begins six-day Europe tour with UK visit

INDIA's finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman arrived in London on Monday evening to begin a six-day official visit to Europe from April 8 to 13.

The Indian high commissioner to the UK, Vikram Doraiswami, received her at Heathrow Airport.

On Tuesday, Sitharaman said that India’s economic resilience and strong domestic demand would continue to make the country a key growth driver amid changes in global trade caused by US tariffs.

She was speaking during an interaction titled ‘Opportunities and challenges for India's quest to become a developed economy by 2047’ at the High Commission of India in London.

“The world has seen depressed growth for over several years; earlier, it was low interest for long and now it's going to be low growth for long, and that's not happy news for anybody,” said Sitharaman, who is on her first UK visit in her current Union Cabinet term.

“India has maintained its fastest growing economy tag continuously now for five years and we still think that momentum may moderate a bit, but it will still be India who will keep that growth… as our growth gets calibrated because of the consumption which exists domestically. It is backed by demand for global-standard goods and that is why globalisation since the 1990s has given India many opportunities,” she said.

“The US is the leading trade partner for India. So, at a time when trade is going to be influenced by tariffs, measures which the US government is taking, we still will have to make sure that the strength that India has in domestic demand as a big magnet which can attract global supplies must be sustained and boosted,” she noted.

She added that this demand could help attract foreign direct investment (FDI) and international manufacturing aimed at serving both the Indian market and exports. “We think India, and a few emerging markets, are going to be the engines of growth. The global depressed growth, if it has to pick up, will have to be because of these engines,” she said.

(With inputs from PTI)