<div>Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday (22 August) said most of the challenges faced by the Indian economy have been created by external factors, even as he expressed confidence in the country's strong fundamentals to withstand such transient global trends.</div><div> </div><div>"I have no doubt that our ability to withstand the transient global trend, created predominately by external factors is very strong," he said here.</div><div> </div><div>He emphasised that macroeconomic indicators like inflation, forex reserve, capital investment in infrastructure and revenue collection are all positive.</div><div> </div><div>Referring to the global turmoil, he said world is passing through some very challenging trends and prospect of the US Fed rate hike is creating uncertainty.</div><div> </div><div>"US is a big economy, anything that happens there has big impact across the globe," he said adding "China is another major global economy, and if their manufacturing data throws up adverse indication, because a global slowdown is going to impact them, that itself has an impact and shakes the entire (scenario). But these are only transient trend." </div><div> </div><div>If an economy exists on its own solid foundation and its own fundamentals are strong, then it is not a very challenging task' to withstand these transient trends, he added.</div><div> </div><div>"Our approach in India today is that our own fundamentals today become stronger and stronger so that our ability in globally integrated economy to withstand these transient trends increase... (and) we acquire certain kind of immunity that beyond a few days we are able to withstand those trends," he said.</div><div> </div><div>Referring to the challenges faced by steel sector, the Finance Minister said, this sector is also impacted by the external factors.</div><div> </div><div>(PTI)</div>
