India's Khalin Joshi and Kartik Sharma grabbed two of the 25 cards on offer at the five-round 90-hole Asian Tour Qualifying School Final Stage, ensuring themselves a fair number of starts on the Tour in 2023. The India duo totalled 9-under for five rounds and were tied 26th. I am happy that as soon as Pranab Da became the Finance Minister, he called the Chairmen of all the banks and told them that whatever stimulus packages are announced by the Government and whatever changes are announced by the Reserve Bank of India in its Monetary Policy, you should follow them in letter and spirit. I have to say that some banks are following them in letter and spirit, but some banks are still charging high rate of interest. The Reserve Bank of India has brought down the repo rates, it has brought down SLR etc. And so the interest rate should automatically come down. But some banks are still keeping the interest rate at 13.5 per cent or 14 per cent. The ideal rate of interest today should be 9.5 per cent as it is being charged by the State Bank of India. I am saying this specifically for the industry because people were talking about job losses. What happened in the industrial sector? Due to global meltdown, what has happened in India? We have lost exports. The IT sector, which was booming, has lost exports. But what about local industries and local consumption? It has not come down. Export-oriented jobs have been lost. I know this personally because I am near to Tiruppur. Tiruppur is only 40 kilometers from Coimbatore. From Tiruppur, garment export was to the tune of Rs. 6,000 crore. Today it is not even half of that, but that is a specific sector of export. What can India do for that and what can the UPA Government do? There is slow down in America and slow down in Europe and so orders are stopped. The Government is trying to give some packages, some incentives for them and it will take time for the jobs to come back. Sir, I would like to focus I have said it many times in this House before on our taditional industries.
