New Delhi: Describing India as a power surplus country, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said there is no shortage of coal and termed the reports in this regard as “absolutely baseless”.
“Absolutely baseless! Nothing is lacking,” Sitaraman said Tuesday at Harvard’s Kennedy School in Boston.
“Indeed, if I recall the minister’s statement, every power generating installation has absolutely stock for the next four days at their own premises and the supply chain is not broken at all,” he said. .
When Harvard professor Lawrence Summers asked about India’s reports of energy shortages and depletion of coal reserves, Sitharaman said during a conversation organized by the Mosawar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, “There is going to be no shortage. which may lead to any shortfall of supply”.
“So it takes care of India’s power situation. Now we are a power surplus country. We are taking a fair amount of risk to see what is available to India in the energy basket, how much is based on fossil fuels and how much comes from renewables and we are always looking at ways to shift it in favor can be done. Renewable energy,” said Sitaraman.
“So the picture is not of short supply, but it is also a picture of the new components in the basket,” she said.
Commenting on India’s immunization campaign against Covid-19 and how the Indian government has come close to delivering one billion doses, Sitharaman said that India has consistently built up this institutional system over the decades where primary health centers, right up to the village level are present and they take care of the basic needs of basic primary care given to the patients in those areas, reported PTI.
The Finance Minister said that since these centers have done the vaccinations for newborns that have to be given periodically, India has been very successful in preventing the spread of polio over the years.
Sitharaman said that over the years, periodic malaria or seasonal diseases, for which doctors treat patients in a particular region, have given India the ability to handle and treat diseases of large epidemic-proportionate proportions. has given.
“As soon as vaccines became available, our systems were ready to be fanned out, even going to some remote areas to give doses to people. So, the institutional arrangement in India has always been the framework that has been created over the years,” she said.
Stating that the question about vaccines was whether they had to be preserved in a certain temperature and distributed across India, Sitharaman said that fortunately the two vaccinations we have used are suitable for Indian conditions. are quite suitable.
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“Therefore, the logistics required to move it from one place to another did not pose much of a challenge and hence, we have been successful,” she said.
The Finance Minister further said that India has given vaccines free of cost through some bilateral arrangements with countries.
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