The ongoing negotiations of mutual tariffs by us: Nirmala Siharaman

The Minister of the Union of Finance Nirmala Siharaman who addresses the press on the Union budget 2025-2026 at Visakhapatnam on Thursday. You see the State Minister for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary. | Photo credit: V. Raju

The Minister of the Union of Finance and Corporate Affairs, Nirmala Siharaman, said “we will have to wait for the result of negotiations by the Union Trade Minister, Piyush Goyal, with the US on the mutual rates proposed by US President Donald Trump.”

Mrs. Nirmala Siharaman, along with the State Minister of the Union for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary and a series of top officials of the Finance Department, were addressed on Thursday the media on the Union budget 2025-2026 in Visakhapatnam.

When her attention was attracted by the impact of mutual tariffs on imports, Mrs. Nirmala Siharaman said: “Trade Minister Piyush Goyal has already gone to the US, he will talk to the Secretary of Trade and the American Trade Representative (USTR). Before he went, he consulted various interested parties. Based on the negotiations, we will receive a call. “”

She said they would take into account Indian exports, because there are a lot of questions about how the interests of the country could be protected.

Asked about the impact of mutual tariffs on the relationship between the two nations, she said that both countries must take care of their interests and negotiate.

Evaluation of msme

Previously, Mrs. Nirmala Sihatman and Mr. Pankaj Chaudhary launched the new credit assessment model based on the Digital Fingerprint Score.

In the budget of the Union 2024-25 it was announced that banks in the public sector (PSB) will build their internal ability to evaluate MSME for credit, instead of based on external evaluation.

According to an official statement, the credit assessment model will use the data with digital and verifiable removal available in the ecosystem and will develop automatic travel for evaluation of the MSME loan, using the objective decision for all loan requests, as well as for the limit based on the model for both existing loans at Bank (ETB) and for the NTB (NTB).

The digital fingerprints used by the model may include authentication of names and PAN using NSDL, mobile and e-mail verification using OTP, GST data API through service providers, bank declarations analysis using account aggregator, upload and ITR verification, commercially active and consumption office through API, and others.

The benefits for MSME include submitting the request from anywhere by online mode, reduced documents and visiting to branch, instant sanction in principle by digital mode, perfect processing of credit proposals, end-to-end decision (STP), reduced transformation time (TAT), credit decision based on objective data / transactional behavior, with no transactional credit, without security, Cgtmse, among others.

The model of credit assessment for MSME based on fingerprints is expected to be a significant improvement on the traditional evaluation of the credit eligibility, based only on the criteria of assets or turnover, the statement said.