New Delhi, July 5 -- India's middle class is set to become an even bigger driver of growth, with 93% of all spending in India expected to come from middle-class and aspirational consumers by 2036, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said at the Rencontres Economiques d'Aix-en-Provence in France on Saturday.

She said the geographic base of this growth is also shifting. Nearly 500 cities are poised to emerge as new centers of economic activity, and unlike in many economies, India's middle class is not concentrated only in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru or Chennai. "They are, on the contrary, in these tier two, tier three cities. So the distribution of wealth is actually automatically seen spreading to cities beyond the metropolitan," she n...