 "Arun Jaitley")
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Thursday that India needs to rapidly urbanize over the next 20 years in order to meet the challenges that an ever expanding population and employable youth will bring.
"Over the next two decades India will have to go in for rapid urbanisation. It has already started happening with satellite towns and urban centres coming up around our larger cities," Jaitley said at an event in New Delhi.
"Today we have 31 per cent of population in urban areas and over the next two decades I think the figure is going to substantially increase. And when this figure increases over next two decades we will see urban India become nerve centre of growth," Jaitley said. He was speaking at a forum on urbanization and its challenges organized by the Asian Development Bank and the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.
The Finance Minister also said that management of scarce resources like water will always remain a big challenge.
Speaking on the global macro-economic situation, Jaitley said: "I ask myself the question did anyone in the meeting have an idea how long this will last and what is really the way out... people have spoken in generalities saying we must use all tools, monetary or fiscal, structural changes. But when these generics are converted into specifics, I find there is lack of ideas," he said.
Of course, the situation in Asia is not as pessimistic as in the rest of the world, he maintained. "The good reason for this is there is a lot of growth potential that Asia has and that's why decisively Asian potential growth rate is much higher than the global growth rate itself," Jaitley remarked.
