Addressing the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD) convention at Indore Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that remittances to the country by non-resident Indians rose 12% on year to about $100 billion in 2022, underscoring the surge in demand for Indian professionals globally after the pandemic. Remittances to India were $89.4 billion in 2021. India continues to be the top recipient of remittances globally for the last several years.
India is becoming a knowledge hub of the world, she said, lauding the contribution of NRIs to the Indian economy. For the next 25 years, India is focusing on ‘4 Is’ for inclusive growth – infrastructure, investment, innovation and inclusion, she said.
Indian diaspora of over 32 million across the world is seen as a ‘model community’ contributing to economic growth and job creation in their adopted lands. Citing a Nasscom report, she said Indian IT companies in the US directly hired 207,000 Americans with an average salary of $106,360 in 2021, registering a growth of 22% in employment post the pandemic.
She drew attention to the fact that 2,000 semiconductor chips are designed annually in India and there are about 0.6 million semiconductors design engineers across the world. Aircraft maker Airbus plans to manufacture C-295 aircraft at Dholera in Gujarat while Lockheed Martin is producing wings for F-16 fighter jets in India for export, she said.
Engineers based in India are estimated to be writing roughly 35% of 100 million lines of codes required to develop 1 driverless car for global vehicle makers. For almost any car which one buys abroad, there’s at least one component which is made in India. Also, 14 out of 15 diamonds in the world are cut & polished in India, she added.
Highlighting India’s progress on digital payments, the minister said in 2022, 74 billion UPI transactions amounting to `125 trillion were made in India.
