By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, MAY 03, 2020: THE Prime Minister, Mr Narendra Modi, yesterday held a meeting to discuss strategies for interventions in the financial sector as well structural reforms to spur growth and welfare in the current context. 

At a meeting with Finance Minister and officials, PM discussed strategies and interventions to support MSMEs and farmers, enhance liquidity and strengthen credit flows. PM also discussed ways and means to ensure financial stability in the wake of COVID-19 and measures taken to enable businesses to recover quickly from the impacts. 

Dwelling on the issue of welfare of workers and the common man, PM pointed out the need to generate gainful employment opportunities by helping businesses overcome difficulties due to disruptions caused by COVID-19.

The Prime Minister also stressed on the need to strengthen major structural reforms undertaken in the past and new structural reforms in the areas of corporate governance, credit markets and infrastructure sectors were also discussed. 

Prime Minister stressed the need to take speedy measures to commence work on new infrastructure projects and speed up works in the infrastructure sector so as to make up for the time lost in COVID-19. He wanted the projects taken up under the National Infrastructure Pipeline be reviewed at the highest level frequently so as to avoid time delays and enable creation of jobs. 

It was also discussed that the reform initiatives undertaken by the various Ministries should continue unabated and action should be taken in a time bound manner to remove any obstacles to investment flows and capital formation.

The meeting was attended by the Home Minister, Finance Minister, Secretaries of the Ministry of Finance along with senior officials of the Government of India.

In another meeting, the PM also discussed reforms required in Agriculture sector. Special emphasis was given on reforms in agriculture marketing, management of marketable surplus, access of farmers to institutional credit and freeing agriculture sector of various restrictions with appropriate backing of statute. 

The focus was on making strategic interventions in the existing marketing eco-system and bringing appropriate reforms in the context of rapid agricultural development. Concessional credit flow to strengthen agriculture infrastructure, special Kisan Credit Card saturation drive for PM-Kisan beneficiaries and facilitating inter and intra-state trade of agriculture produce to ensure fairest return to farmer were some of the important areas covered. Developing e-NAM into a platform of platforms to enable e-commerce was one of the important topics of discussion.