Global crises now occur twice a day: Jaitley

From a situation earlier when the global economy would face a crisis once a decade, now such crises almost "twice a day" have become normal occurrences, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Saturday.

"Earlier, while a crisis would occur once in a decade, now they can take place twice a day. There can be a crisis brought on by Chinese currency devaluation in one part of the world and by falling oil prices in another," he said here at the "Start-Up India" event to be launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi later in the day.

"looking down the tunnel, nobody can envisage what the world economic situation will be in a year," the minister said.

Saying the country could take "limited satisfaction" from having become the fastest growing big economy, Jaitley said it was faced with many challenges like in agriculture, two successive weak monsoons and low investment by a private sector which had overborrowed putting banks' finances under great strain.

"In these circumstances, the government had to explore new areas for encouraging entrepreneurship.

"So, we brought in the MUDRA scheme intended to target the bottom 25 percent of the population, so they can get loans from financial institutions and banks, both private and public sector." 

Informing the audience that so far 1.73 crore borrowers have taken loans under the MUDRA scheme, he said under the Stand Up India initiative, to be launched separately, every bank branch would adopt one woman entrepreneur, as well as one from the scheduled caste and scheduled tribe categories.