Chennai:
Holding that 73 crore people of the country's population have received their vaccination, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Sunday said vaccination was the only medicine to boost the economy as it allows people to conduct businesses regularly or farmers to carry out the farming activity.
The ''Vaccination program has been going on smoothly in the country and so far 73 crore people have already received jabs free of charge. Today, through vaccination programs, people were able to conduct business, traders were able to procure products to run businesses, (thereby) boosting the economy, or farmers were able to do farming…So, vaccination is the only medicine (to combat the virus, to boost the economy)…,'' she said.
Sitharaman made those comments while delivering her address at the centenary celebrations of Tamilnad Mercantile Bank here on Sunday.
On Sunday, the health ministry in Tamil Nadu eyeing to inoculate 20 lakh people is holding a 'Mega Vaccination Camp' through 40,000 camps being conducted across the State.
''All our prayers are not for a third wave (of the Covid-19 virus). Suppose, if it occurs, then one has to think about the availability of hospitals, even if there is a hospital, does it have an ICU, and even if there is an ICU, does it have oxygen support? For all these questions, the Ministry announced a scheme allowing hospitals to ramp up the expansion when there was a huge impact in the country caused by the second wave (of Covid-19),'' she said.
Sitharaman said hospitals located in rural areas were able to take up expansion work by availing the schemes announced by the Ministry, including the ''viability gap funding'' scheme.
The minister added that it was due to the aggressive financial inclusion programme through the Jan Dhan Yojana the government became successful in helping the poor in rural India by transferring Rs 1,500 to their accounts during the first three months of the pandemic. “This would not have been possible had we not launched PMJDY,” she said.
The Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) was launched on August 28, 2014. During the pandemic, an amount of Rs 500 per month was credited to the accounts of women account holders under PMJDY for three months (April to June 2020) under PM Garib Kalyan Yojana.
A total of around Rs 30,945 crore was credited to such accounts during that time. The minister added that schemes like Mudra yojana and Svanidhi too helped rural India. She also urged the private sector banks too to take up government schemes more aggressively.
Sitharaman said it is because of the Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme (ECGS) launched by the Centre that MSMEs were able to tide over the crisis and run their businesses. Under ECGS, loans of around Rs 2.73 trillion have been sanctioned out of the enhanced Rs 4.5 trillion limit so far. Of this, banks have so far disbursed around Rs 2.14 trillion.
She said that a lot of energy of the banking sector has gone towards recovery of non-performing assets, and ‘prompt corrective measures’ is what helped the sector to come back to the current level. According to the latest data, NPAs declined from Rs 7,39,541 crore on March 2019 to Rs 6,16,616 crore on March 2021, down 17 per cent in a span of two years.