India Inc needs to ‘leapfrog’ and focus on building innovative products to help the economy transform itself into a globally competitive one, said Jayant Sinha, Minister of State for Finance. Emphasis should be on creating entirely new industries that would end up meeting the unmet needs of consumers, Sinha said after releasing a book ‘Salt of the Earth: The story of Tata Chemicals’ in the Capital on Wednesday.

Sinha said the Modi-led Government has adopted an economic philosophy of “empowerment” and this was completely different to the philosophy of “entitlements” practiced by the erstwhile UPA government. He said the approach of the current dispensation was much more towards empowerment. The effort will be to equip people with resources so that they could build better life standards for themselves. Now almost every household of the country has a bank account and the direct benefit transfer (DBT) flows on LPG have started flowing into these accounts.

Sinha said the Government was focusing on bringing about “supply side revolution” while the UPA regime sought to address issues from the demand side. “We are pursuing 7-8 per cent growth in a non-inflationary way and trying to build productive capacities to get there. We are a Government of the poor and also a pro-business Government.

There is no contradiction in being both a pro-business government and a Government of the poor,” Sinha said. One must understand that both business and poor will gain if the economy grows and does well. Only when the economy does well will there be tax revenues for the Centre to spend on development initiatives, he said.

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