NE NEWS SERVICE
CHENNAI, FEB 5
India as a tropical country, can look forward to exploring opportunities in the renewable energy sector, Tamil Nadu Finance Minister Palanivel Thiagarajan said here on Sunday during a literary festival.
The TN minister said East Asian countries, particularly South Korea and Japan, are looking forward to investing elsewhere when the world is recovering from COVID-19, adding that India can step up its engagements with global finance and reap the benefits.
Speaking at the Mathrubhumi International Festival of Letters (MBIFL 2023), Thiagarajan said India’s economic inequality has widened over the past three decades of liberalisation. ”India’s economic disparity has only worsened over the past three decades of liberalisation, but the country can benefit from the present global downturn by leveraging its abundant natural resources in the post-pandemic era,” he said.
In a country like India, solar energy has great potential, Thiagarajan added. ”India, as a tropical country, can look forward to exploring opportunities in the renewable energy sector. Tamil Nadu, for instance, has immense scope to generate wind energy. Up north, summers are long and the sun is out for long. Solar energy has great potential,” he said.
Meanwhile, addressing another session at the MBIFL, Thiagarajan had on Saturday said that the ”attempts at homogenisation by the ruling party at the Centre was a worrying threat to the federal structure of India”. Pointing out the disparity in tax allocation by the Central government, as northern states get greater share due to factors like high population, Thiagarajan said the southern states like Tamil Nadu and Kerala had achieved developmental targets set by the national governments in areas of population control, but are effectively penalised for that now due to the proportional population figures leaving them at a disadvantage.
