The host of financial and digital reforms introduced, along with the enhanced coverage of the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme, have the potential to catapult India as a global manufacturing hub by creating jobs and enhancing exports, said Anurag Singh Thakur, Minister of State for Finance & Corporate Affairs, Government of India.

He was speaking at a session on FinTech: Transforming the world of finance organized under the umbrella of CII Partnership Summit 2020 organised virtually by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) with Department of Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, Ministry of Commerce and Industry.

“Every single sector chosen under the PLI has the opportunity to become a game changer and have a multiplier impact on the Indian economy,” he further added. Promotion of manufacturing sector and creation of conductive manufacturing ecosystem will not only enable integration with the global supply chains but also establish backward linkages with the MSME sector.

Noting India’s rapid progress made in the FinTech space, the Minster said that India is now among the fastest growing FinTech markets in the world. The use of cutting-edge FinTech products has enabled the provision of agriculture credit at a much lower cost to the farmers. “The Government has also laid a digital highway of growth for the banking and financial sector by connecting India’s villages with high-speed optic fibre network. This has enabled fast adoption of digital payments among the large Indian populace”, Thakur added.

Noting the increased focus of the Government in adopting digital means for furthering India’s growth agenda, Sanjiv Bajaj, Vice President, Confederation of Indian Industry, highlighted the impressive strides made by the various Fintech companies in India in raising US$1.7 billion this year as investments. Specifically, the Digital India program of Government envisions to transform India into a digitally enabled economy, buttressed by the increasing penetration of smartphones and growing middle class as well as rise in disposable incomes.

Other who spoke in the session included foreign players in the space of  FinTech such as Daina Klepone, Managing Director, Enterprise Lithuania, Lithuania; Bartosz Lopinski, Chief Executive Officer, Billennium, Poland;  Thomas Krogh Jensen, CEO, Copenhagen Fintech, Denmark and Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief Fintech Officer, Monetary Authority of Singapore. They touched upon the role of FinTech in transforming the way the world handles its finances and deliberated on the latest developments in the global FinTech space.