Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday acknowledged that there are too many ‘ifs’ in purchasing fertiliser through tenders for the forthcoming rabi season.
However, she assured that there is an adequate stock of fertiliser available for the kharif season. She also highlighted that India has the fiscal space to support sectors impacted by the escalating West Asia crisis, while the Reserve Bank of India has room to cut interest rates to deal with global challenges.
“We should start tendering out for rabi season. There’s excess buying, but we can’t deny the farmer. Supplier is unclear on price Insurance and logistics an issue Insurers are refusing to insure certain shipments This is uncertainty, even if we want to prep in advance, there are so many ifs,” she said while speaking at an event organized by the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) here.
Enough fiscal space
Meanwhile, she assured that there is enough fiscal space available to meet the challenges caused by the war in West Asia. “India has fiscal space, room to maintain our capex programme, room for the RBI to cut rates, room to offer targeted support to affected sectors,” she said, while attributing this as a dividend of a decade of fiscal discipline. “This is the strategic value of fiscal prudence that pays dividends across decades. Therefore, we have been able to reduce the excise duty on diesel and petrol; specific exemptions were given on critical petrochemical products and SEZs to operate in DTA,” she said.
Observing that the current year is even more challenging than the previous one, Sitharaman said, “the escalation of Middle East conflict has evolved from a regional security concern into a systemic tremor threatening vital arteries of global energy, and hardening the lines of new multipolar world order.”
She said the world economy is witnessing volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, and that global public debt has surged.
According to the Minister, global public debt has surged to approximately $106 trillion, exceeding 95 per cent of global GDP. As per the IMF, the United States had a debt-to-GDP ratio of 125 per cent in 2025, with Japan at a staggering 235 per cent. Many advanced economies that spent decades running expansionary fiscal policies now find themselves with severely constrained policy space precisely when they need it most.
Debt-to-GDP ratio
Against this backdrop, India continues to stand out. “Our general government debt-to-GDP ratio (which includes States’ debt), at approximately 81 per cent, is the lowest among major economies after Germany. More importantly, India is the only major economy where the IMF projects this ratio to fall significantly, to 75.8 per cent by 2030, while the debt outlook for the advanced economies such as US, China, Germany, and others is projected to worsen.,” Sitharaman said.
Further, India’s external debt-to-GDP ratio stands at just 19.1 per cent (as of September 2025), one of the lowest in the emerging market world. India’s foreign exchange reserves, at over $688 billion (as of March 31, 2026), provide import cover of approximately 11 months, a substantial buffer.
“This is not an involuntary outcome, as many leaders wrongly believe. It is the product of deliberate, sustained, and sometimes politically difficult choices made over years of fiscal management. It was made possible because of the agile policies and stable leadership of this government, with a singular focus on ensuring India achieves godspeed progress,” she said.
Published on April 6, 2026