FM Nirmala Sitharaman to CNN-News18: Working With States, Local Bodies to Bring in Transparency | Exclusive

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, while speaking exclusively to Network18 Group Editor Rahul Joshi, a day after presenting the interim budget, spoke about making the system more transparent.

Elaborating on the reforms ahead, she said, “First of all, as I said, the system to become more transparent, more things will have to be done in order to make sure that we work together with states. It’s one thing for the Union government to work on those areas, which are exclusively with the Central government, but where there are overlaps, there are some states, which have come about enthusiastically to say, yes, ‘we should benefit also from this vibrancy’, which results after such measures are taken.”

“When reforms are talked about, we normally always say three levels where it has to be carried out with the same vigour – the central government, the state government and then the local bodies. Now, working with the state governments has already started happening. In the last few years, you have seen very many areas where we are working together; the local body level, the municipal urban local bodies, the panchayats, we need to have greater interchange of ideas and working together with them also. That will also continue,” she said.

When asked about why, with the exception of Air India, no strategic privatisation has taken place and if there was a shift in the thinking, the FM said: “If a policy framework has been announced, and in that we have said that there are only core strategic sectors, which government recognises where the government will be having a minimal presence and even in those sectors, private sector will be allowed to, or it will be completely open for them to participate in total, in the sense, there will not be any one sector inclusive of the core strategic sector, which will be exclusively reserved for public sector, whereby consolidation will have to happen to make them big enough for a big country like India. Efficiencies will have to be brought in, their values will have to be increased. So, this question of yours will have to fit into that frame.”

“I will not reverse any of the cabinet approved decisions, but at the same time, you should probably also have noticed that for each of them, we are working to make sure, we are not allowing them to remain there, till they are getting disinvested. Equally, we are working to make sure that their valuations are kept up. They are improved upon that. If you look at the public sector listing listed companies and their valuation in the market today, you see the kind of vibrancy which has been brought in into them. The share values have gone up, the dividends are even much better than earlier. So, disinvestment is one thing, but bringing value to them and making sure that the markets look at them absolutely favourably is another. In fact, the public sector companies have done really well and public markets are also where they are.”

“The Deepam department, which takes care of the disinvestment, has slowly, in trickles, released a lot of government share into the market so that private ownerships can come in and they can take hold of those shares. So, that is happening already, and we’ll certainly like to make sure that greater participation of public ownership,” the FM said.

When asked if it could be a possibility in companies like, SBI or ONGC, the FM said, “Absolutely.”