Nitin Gadkari encourages use of solar energy, says it can help reduce electricity costs

In a bid to highlight opportunities in the solar energy sector, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari held a meeting via video conferencing with the members of Maha Solar Sangathan on Saturday. Highlighting the importance of solar energy, Gadkari said the sector has huge potential and can help in reducing the electricity cost significantly.

He further stated that sectors such as agriculture and warehousing are energy-intensive sectors and efficient commercial use of solar energy can help in reducing power cost. Nitin Gadkari emphasized the need of enhancing export and import substitution to replace foreign imports with domestic production. He encouraged manufacturers to contribute to making India self-reliant through Make in India products.

The Union Minister mentioned the Centre has announced several measures under Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan for providing impetus to the MSME sector and to deal with the current economic instability. These include collateral free automatic loan, which will allow the MSMEs to enhance working capital by 20 percent without providing additional collateral.

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Aatmanirbhar Bharat Package

The financial package of Rs 20 lakh crore was announced by PM Modi in his address to the nation on May 12 and included the previous monetary package and the liquidity measures announced by RBI to date to kick-start the Indian economy's growth.

FM Sitharaman has announced a slew of reforms in five parts to strengthen MSMEs, migrants, street vendors, urban poor, agriculture, animal husbandry, and fishing.  She has also announced sectoral reforms in Coal, defence production, minerals, civil aviation (Airports, Airspace Mgmt & MRO), power distribution in UTs, Space, atomic energy and reformed MGNREGA, education and a new PSE policy. 

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RBI Slashes Repo Rate

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Shaktikanta Das while addressing the media on Friday, May 22, announced that the Repo rate has been slashed by 40 basis points from 4.4 % to 4%. The Reverse repo rate has been reduced to 3.35%: and the MSF and Bank rate has been cut down to 4.25%. In his last address on April 17, the RBI governor had slashed the reverse repo rate under liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) from 4% to 3.75%.

The consecutive cut in the Repo rate - the rate at which the central bank lends money to banks - takes it to its lowest point ever, in an effort to get banks to pass on the benefit to consumers and spur the investment cycle. 

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