FM Nirmala Sitharaman talks to CNN-News18: Working with states, local bodies to increase transparency | Exclusive

A day after presenting the interim budget, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman spoke about how to make the system more transparent in an exclusive interview with Network18 Group Editor Rahul Joshi.

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Elaborating on future reforms, she said: “First of all, as I said, to make the system more transparent, more has to be done to make sure we work with countries. It’s important for the federal government to work in these areas. What’s going on is that these areas are entirely the responsibility of the central government, but where there is overlap there are some states that are enthusiastically saying, ‘Yes, we should also benefit from this dynamism’, and that’s the result of taking these measures.”

“When we talk about reforms, we usually always say that reforms must be done at three levels with equal intensity – central government, state government and then local government. Now, cooperation with state governments has begun. In the past few years During the year, you have seen our cooperation in many areas; at the local body level, municipal city local bodies, juries, we also need to have more exchange of ideas and cooperation with them. This will continue as well,” she said .

Asked why no strategic privatization has taken place except Air India and whether there has been a change in thinking, the FM said: “If the policy framework has been announced and we have said that only core strategic sectors, the government acknowledges that the government has Minimum participation of sectors, even in these sectors the private sector will be allowed to participate or completely open to their participation in the sense that there will not be any one sector including the core strategic sectors which will It is reserved exclusively for the public sector, so it has to be consolidated to make it big enough to accommodate a big country like India. It has to be more efficient, it has to be more valuable. So, this question of yours has to fit into that framework.”

“I’m not going to overturn any decision that was approved by Cabinet, but at the same time, you should probably also note that for each of them, we’re trying to make sure that we don’t allow them to stay there until they get defunded. Likewise, we Efforts are being made to ensure that their valuations remain the same. They have improved upon that. If you look at the public sector listed companies listed in the market today and their valuations, you will see the energy that has been injected into them. Share prices are rising Now, the dividends are much better than before. So, disinvestment is one thing, but bringing value to them and ensuring that the market is absolutely in their favor is another matter. In fact, public sector companies are doing very well, public The same goes for the market.”

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“The Deepam department, which is responsible for disinvestment, has slowly, bit by bit, released a lot of government shares into the market so that private ownership can come in and hold those shares. So, that has happened and we certainly want to ensure that public ownership More participation,” FM said.

Asked if there was any possibility of companies like SBI or ONGC doing so, the FM said: “Of course.”