One of the most action-oriented leaders in the Modi government has now been given charge of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, in addition to that of the Indian Railways.
Born in Mumbai on June 13, 1964, Piyush Goyal is a CPA and holds a degree in Law. Growing up in a political active family, Goyal joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at age 20. His father Ved Prakash Goyal was Minister of Shipping in the Atal Behari Vajypayee government, a member of India’s upper house of parliament and the treasurer of the BJP and his mother was a state legislator in Maharashtra.
In the second term of Modi’s government, Piyush Goyal has been awarded the Ministries of Railways as well as Commerce and Industry.
To take the Indian economy to $1 trillion exports each in goods and services in the next five years, Goyal believes that it is important for businesses to avail credit at competitive rates of interest. He has requested India’s central bank – the Reserve Bank of India – to:
- make credit in foreign currency available to exporters at London Interbank Offered Rate plus maximum 200 points
- investigate a $25 billion line of credit from its foreign currency reserves for swap to well performing banks, as also priority sector lending norms for export credit.
Additionally, Goyal has asked officials to work with state governments to identify 50 manufacturing clusters across the country. Priority will be given to micro, small and medium enterprises and most clusters will have a mix of various industries such as engineering, textiles, and electronics.
From 2014 – 2019 in his first stint as minister in the Modi administration, Goyal was appointed junior minister for Power, Coal, New and Renewable Energy and Mines. He initiated and completed the government program to electrify 18,000 villages in the country. He was awarded the 2018 Carnot Prize for distinguished contributions to energy policy and work in village electrification by the University of Pennsylvania’s Kleinman Center for Energy Policy.
In 2017 Goyal was appointed Minister for Railways. During his tenure Indian Railways achieved its best safety record in the year ended March 2019. In collaboration with the Government of Japan, a high speed passenger corridor project between Ahmedabad to Mumbai was undertaken. The government increased the scope of private public partnerships beyond providing maintenance to development of stations, building private freight terminals and private container train operations.
