Finance Ministry Quotes

Money is the probably the most successful story ever told. It has no objective value... but then you have these master storytellers: the big bankers, the finance ministers... and they come, and they tell a very convincing story.

Finance ministers the world over, responsible for assuring the service of the internal debts by forcing down the standards of living, do not find the matter so simple. They observe that the average man today finds the problem of making both ends meet a serious one. They are well aware that he demands something out of life over and above the bare necessities, and they have a realistic view of the situation created when a government demands this margin in taxes or takes it by inflation.

Our country is at peace, but the stakes are as high as if we were at war – a war waged not with battleships, guns and planes but with words and money. Its foot soldiers, in a sense, are the lines of the unemployed, the pensioners crowding outside banks; cars queuing at gas stations are a crippled cavalry; generals are the finance ministers who lob proposals at one another with the aggression of those who will not suffer the consequences. All are caught up in a five-year campaign in which Greece has struggled to meet the terms of the biggest bailout in history....

I am calling Shaktikanta Das as a corrupt person. I am surprised that the man I got removed from the Finance Ministry for corruption was brought in as governor.

India's Finance Ministry's ... feet might be in India, but it's head is in Washington.

In the old days we were the challenger brand competing against the big banks, but today I go round the world and I sit with governors of central banks and finance ministers and, in some cases, prime ministers. They all know Travelex. We are regarded as the establishment - the world's largest retailer of foreign currency.

I was the first businessman to say, 'You should give tax benefit to only small companies. You should say your profits are exempt to a limit of Rs. 50 crore or so, but beyond that, you should pay taxes.' I have been arguing with successive finance ministers on this.

Productivity - the amount of output delivered per hour of work in the economy - is often viewed as the engine of progress in modern capitalist economies. Output is everything. Time is money. The quest for increased productivity occupies reams of academic literature and haunts the waking hours of C.E.O.s and finance ministers.

I remember my first meeting with my management team when I became Indonesia's Minister of Finance. I was the youngest person and the first woman ever to hold that job. Everybody else in the room was male. I knew then that I had to work harder than any man to prove to them that I was capable.

I have dealt with politicians ever since I came into the government in 1971. I have seen many prime ministers, many finance ministers.

The Finance Ministry can bring about real social change.

Your Minister of Finance must confess to Your Majesty that he is frozen with terror on examining the budget for the War, and must also that he knows of no means by which such expenses can possibly be met….