New Delhi: In the backdrop of fears pertaining to the slowdown of economy, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday me the representatives of various sectors and 'fairly quickly' come out with steps to help them. Sitharaman, who on Monday met the heads of public and private sector banks, is scheduled to hold similar meetings during the week with representatives of the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) and automobile sectors, industry chambers, markets, real estate and homebuyers.

With these meetings, the finance minister seeks to devise plans for various struggling sectors amid fears that the country might witness further slowdown in economy in the days to come. The idea is to firm up swift corrective action plans for critical sectors to reverse the slowdown. "Essential idea behind these meetings is to hear from them and fairly quickly after that come up with something which will help those sectors which are giving their views to us," she told reporters during a press conference.

The minister's statement assumes significance as key indicators pointing are towards a slowdown, and the International Monetary Fund and the Asian Development Bank have cut India's growth forecast, citing global and domestic headwinds. "We are getting inputs from various sectors and trying to respond, so that confidence of those sectors being restored," Sitharaman said.


According to the Central Statistics Office, GDP growth during 2018-19 stood at 6.8 per cent, lower than 7.2 per cent in the previous financial year. It is expected to only marginally improve in the current fiscal to 7 per cent, in case the private investors return and consumption expenditure rebounds.

The much crucial Monday meeting with heads of public and private sector banks focused on credit flow to various sectors, especially to to non-banking financial companies (NBFCs), automobiles and MSME, growth in which are faltering. The Finance Ministry recently informed that banks have agreed to take steps to review lending rates as they have not "commensurately" transmitted to borrowers benefits of reduction in the policy rate by the RBI.

"Banks need to commensurately transmit rate cut benefit in lending. In the meeting, banks agreed to take steps as per RBI guidelines to review their lending rates," said an official release. The release was issued after a meeting between Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and heads of public sector banks (PSBs) as well as private lenders, including HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank and Citi Bank.