Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on the Sunday that India has come a long way from the days when high inflation, fiscal deficit and a stunted power and infra sector was what the India story was all about.
Sharing the International Monetary Fund reports from 2014 and 2018 on Facebook, the Union Finance Minister wrote that the analysis clearly points to the fact that India’s economy is in a much better shape now than it was in 2014.
“An analysis of what the IMF had to say in 2014 as against 2018 is very clear – high inflation, high fiscal deficit, high current account deficit, a standstill infrastructure, power sector, & allocation of natural resources,” he wrote on Facebook.
“We have come a long way. The last four years have seen a series of reforms, both legislative and otherwise, which have been carried at by the Government,” underlined the Finance Minister.
Jaitley said that the system has been “substantially cleaned up and made more transparent”.
“In last four years decisiveness has led to easier decision making and made the economy stand out amongst several other countries. I would urge all to read these two IMF reports, the copy of which are now publically available, any reasonable person will concur with what I have said,” wrote Jaitley while sharing the reports.
The IMF had earlier this month praised India’s growth story stating that the country can become what China was for the world economy.
Suggesting steps for more structural reforms, the IMF’s mission chief for India Ranil Salgado said, “India now contributes, in purchasing power parity measures, 15 per cent of the growth in the global economy, which is substantial.”
This is next to only China and the US, he said.
“But of total global growth in Purchasing power parity (PPP) terms, it’s 15 per cent of total global growth. Trading is not as high as China trade levels,” Salgado said as the IMF Executive Board released the report of its annual consultations with India.
In its report, the IMF Executive Board has forecast India’s growth to rise to 7.3 per cent in FY 2018/19 and 7.5 per cent in FY 2019/20, on strengthening investment and robust private consumption.