Overview

• Speaking at Bank of Maharashtra’s Foundation Day in Pune, the finance minister pressed lenders with strong balance sheets to channel more credit toward public projects, enterprise investment and small businesses.
• She highlighted an average annual growth of roughly 8% since 2021–22 and 7.8% GDP growth in the April–June quarter as evidence of economic strength.
• Customer trust and grievance redressal were flagged as priorities, with a call to treat each complaint as a chance to fix root causes and prevent repeat issues.
• Department of Financial Services secretary M. Nagaraju said public sector banks posted Rs 1.78 lakh crore in profit last year and are outpacing private banks in credit disbursement, urging additional support for MSMEs.
• Sitharaman cited an IMF note praising UPI’s interoperable design but cautioned that digitalisation by itself does not replace integrity, empathy and human judgment.