Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday advocated the teaching of financial literacy in schools and colleges.

Teaching financial literacy was very important and it has to start early, she said. Presently, it was being imparted outside the curriculum, the Finance Minister said during an interaction with students at A M Jain College here, on the topic “Transforming India Into The New Decade.

“You have institutions like the RBI, SEBI and also some national security depositories. Financial literacy lessons are online too, spread over a couple of weeks, if you want to take that. But it should be taught in schools and colleges as part of the curriculum,” she said.

To a question, Sitharaman replied that there's no harm in importing raw material or intermediary products for a growing economy, if the aim was to emerge as a manufacturing hub.

“Ideally I would like to have the exports more than the imports because it gives earnings. But if imports is going to gradually improve your exports, why not. If imports are there, its good sometimes,” she said.

On defence production, Sitharaman said apart from making budgetary provisions to encourage indigenous manufacturing of defence equipments required for our armed forces, the Centre ensured that the products made by the MSMEs were certified by the Indian army in order to facilitate exports. Moreover, a mechanism to purchase products for 10 years was also in place, she added.

Quoting the Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Sitharaman said the defence equipment exports which were Rs 20,000 crore this year was likely to reach Rs 24,000 crore target in three months.

Talks were on with the African countries, Russia and Sri Lanka for bilateral trade in Indian rupees, the Union Minister said in response to another question.

Denying that Artificial Intelligence (AI) would displace jobs, as believed, she said it would pave the way for emergence of skilled manpower to tackle the challenges in diverse fields.

“You need people with expertise in AI. To use AI you need to develop the tools with which you can exploit the capacity of AI. Obviously, it will be done by people like you students," Sitharaman said.

Certain new domain expertise that emerge would generate so many types of people and skill, too, with which AI could be exploited, the Finance Minister said.

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