Washington: The International Monetary Fund called for a whole set of structural reforms, and said there is no reason why India could not resume an eight or nine per cent or even higher growth rate in the coming years.
It has at least at this stage pegged a kind of medium-term growth for India at around “7 3/4 per cent if, a lot of the structural reforms can be introduced.”
Assistant Director and Mission Chief for India in the IMF’s Asian and Pacific Department, Paul Cashin told reporters, “There’s certainly no reason why India could not resume 8, 9, even higher growth path going forward, but it will take some time to introduce these measures.” Joining the conference call from India, Fund’s Senior Resident Representative, Tom Richardson, said, “We have for a couple of years and continue to urge a whole set of structural reforms that are going to be business-friendly, going to be growth enhancing. Including, particularly in the power sector.”
Richardson observed that India still has a fairly heavily state-dominated food system and the whole public distribution for food is unusual by international standards, and said IMF wants to see ways of moving toward more market-based agricultural outcomes. Direct benefit transfer, using cash transfers to provide the subsidies and the food security act are going to be a way to move in that direction, he added.
