{"id":30534,"date":"2026-07-04T06:12:05","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T00:42:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/nearly-500-cities-set-to-become-next-economic-hubs-fm-sitharaman\/"},"modified":"2026-07-04T06:12:05","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T00:42:05","slug":"nearly-500-cities-set-to-become-next-economic-hubs-fm-sitharaman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/nearly-500-cities-set-to-become-next-economic-hubs-fm-sitharaman\/","title":{"rendered":"Nearly 500 cities set to become next economic hubs: FM Sitharaman"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-articlebody=\"1\"><video-embed value=\"false\"\/><\/p>\n<div class=\"ihgno clearfix  \">\n<div class=\"e9jwa\">\n<div class=\"vdo_embedd\">\n<div class=\"GfdvZ\">\n<section class=\"_bIDB  clearfix id-r-component leadmedia undefined undefined  E9tg9 \" style=\"top:0px\">\n<div class=\"_bIDB\" data-ua-type=\"1\" onclick=\"stpPgtnAndPrvntDefault(event)\">\n<div class=\"ypVvZ\">\n<div class=\"WGttI\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.toiimg.com\/thumb\/msid-132170496,imgsize-586114,width-400,height-225,resizemode-4\/-.jpg\" alt=\"Nearly 500 cities set to become next economic hubs: FM Sitharaman\" title=\"Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman\" decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"high\"\/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"Ta7d_ img_cptn\"><span title=\"Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman\">Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman<\/span><\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>NEW DELHI: Finance minister <a href=\"https:\/\/timesofindia.indiatimes.com\/topic\/nirmala-sitharaman\" styleobj=\"[object Object]\" class=\"\" commonstate=\"[object Object]\" frmappuse=\"1\">Nirmala Sitharaman<\/a> on Friday described the middle class as the growth engine of India and said nearly 500 cities are poised to emerge as the country&#8217;s next centres of economic activity.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"4\"\/>Participating in a panel discussion on &#8216;How to promote the rise of a new middle class&#8217; at the Rencontres Economiques d&#8217;Aix-en-Provence, a major economic forum of France, Sitharaman said 31% of India&#8217;s population is middle class as of today. Since India opened its economy, the middle class is growing at an annual rate of 6.3%, she noted.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"7\"\/>&#8220;We think 93% of all spending in India will be because of the middle class or the slightly affluent consumers&#8230;and <!-- -->again, this middle class is not concentrated in our metropolitan cities&#8230;India&#8217;s model has resulted in the development in such a way that the middle class is present not just in big cities but they are on the contrary in these tier two, tier three cities,&#8221; the finance minister said.<span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"12\"\/>Quoting an OECD study, Sitharaman said India will surpass China in absolute terms in its middle-class population size between 2030 and 2035 on the back of several measures taken by govt. Stressing that India remains the fastest-growing large economy after Covid-19, primarily because of consumption triggered by the middle class, she said, &#8220;Nearly 500 cities are poised to emerge as the new centres of economic activity&#8221;.<!-- --> Sitharaman spoke about benefits of AI, saying people are continuously upgrading their technical skills. For those who fear AI may displace jobs, there is extensive govt support through AI-focused skilling programmes, she said. <span class=\"id-r-component br\" data-pos=\"15\"\/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/timesofindia.indiatimes.com\/business\/india-business\/nearly-500-cities-set-to-become-next-eco-hubs-fm-sitharaman\/articleshow\/132170497.cms\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman NEW DELHI: Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday described the middle class as the growth engine of India and said nearly 500 cities are poised to emerge as the country&#8217;s next centres of economic activity.Participating in a panel discussion on &#8216;How to promote the rise of a new middle class&#8217; at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30535,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}