Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday, 3 July 2026, addressed the Rencontres Économiques d'Aix-en-Provence in France, highlighting India's financial inclusion journey as a model of social transformation driven by banking access, sovereign-backed credit, and digital infrastructure.

Context

Speaking at the prestigious annual economic forum in Aix-en-Provence, France, Sitharaman credited Prime Minister Narendra Modi with bringing 'crores of unbanked citizens into the formal banking system' through the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY). She described this as the foundational step of a broader transformation that has since reshaped how low-income Indians access credit and participate in the economy.

The Rencontres Économiques d'Aix-en-Provence is a high-profile international forum that draws heads of government, central bankers, and economists to deliberate on global growth challenges. Sitharaman's address positioned India's inclusion architecture as a replicable model for emerging economies.

Policy Backdrop

PM Jan Dhan Yojana, launched on 28 August 2014, opened zero-balance bank accounts for previously unbanked households across India, forming the first pillar of the government's JAM (Jan Dhan–Aadhaar–Mobile) trinity. The scheme enabled direct benefit transfers, eliminating intermediaries and reducing leakage in welfare delivery.

Sitharaman also highlighted 'collateral-free credit backed by a sovereign guarantee,' a reference to schemes such as the Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana, launched in April 2015, which extended loans of up to ₹10 lakh to micro-enterprises without requiring traditional collateral. This credit layer allowed first-time borrowers — many of them women and informal workers — to build a formal credit history.

India's digital public infrastructure, including Aadhaar-based identity verification and the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), further layered onto these banking foundations to enable real-time, low-cost transactions at scale. Sitharaman described this stack as empowering citizens 'to become entrepreneurs, build creditworthiness and participate in the formal economy.'

Stakeholders and Impact

The primary beneficiaries of this architecture have been unbanked households, first-generation borrowers, small traders, and rural women who lacked access to formal financial services before 2014. By linking bank accounts to Aadhaar and mobile numbers, the government created a verifiable identity and transaction trail that commercial lenders could use to assess creditworthiness.

On the international stage, India has increasingly presented this sequenced model — account opening, followed by direct transfers, followed by credit access, underpinned by digital rails — as a scalable template for other developing nations. Sitharaman's Aix-en-Provence address is part of this ongoing diplomatic effort to establish India's development approach as a global reference point.

What's Next

Attention will now turn to the Reserve Bank of India's next Financial Inclusion Index release, which tracks the depth and quality of banking penetration across the country. Any expansion of sovereign-guaranteed credit ceilings in the forthcoming Union Budget will be closely watched as a signal of how far the government intends to push the credit-access agenda. Sitharaman's international advocacy suggests the political and policy momentum behind financial inclusion remains strong heading into the budget cycle.