Search Results for “India”

Gamechanger: The Digital Payment Boom in India

IMFBlog2019-03-15T12:17:58-04:00January 5, 2018|

January 5, 2018

Madhur Deora, CFO of PayTM: Mobile payment platforms in India are providing small loans to people who’ve never had access to credit (IMF photo).

What does a shoe shiner in India have in common with central bankers and finance ministers? They both can appreciate the digital-payment boom. It’s sweeping the world but has accelerated in India, where last November the government demonetized—declaring that 86 percent of the country’s currency in circulation would cease to be legal tender. (more…)

Chart of the Week: For India, Toilets Bring Benefits

IMFBlog2019-03-26T11:54:40-04:00February 27, 2017|

By iMFdirect

Improving access to sanitation, an important Sustainable Development Goal, is essential for achieving gender equality and economic prosperity. It leads to increased female participation in the workforce, higher literacy and faster economic growth, according to the IMF’s latest research on India. (more…)

Emerging Economies and Global Financial Safety: Insights from India

IMFBlog2019-03-27T09:32:45-04:00May 16, 2016|

by iMFdirect

Raghuram Rajan is charged with monetary stability in one of the world’s leading emerging economies as Governor of the Reserve Bank of India.

Listen to this podcast interview with the policymaker as he discusses why countries need a global financial safety net in an era of potential dramatic overnight changes in a country’s economic and financial fortunes, whether triggered from without or within.

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Make in India: Which Exports Can Drive the Next Wave of Growth?

IMFBlog2019-03-27T09:44:53-04:00May 5, 2016|

By Rahul Anand, Kalpana Kochhar, and Saurabh Mishra

The expansion of India’s exports of services between 1990 and 2013 has been nothing short of spectacular, putting India on a par with the world’s high-income economies in terms of service-product sophistication and as a share of total exports. This has created unique opportunities for continued growth. By contrast, when it comes to exports of manufactured goods, India has lagged behind its emerging-markets peers, both in quality and as a percentage of the total export basket, leaving substantial room for improvement.

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It’s Mostly Food: How to Tame Indian Inflation

IMFBlog2019-03-27T11:19:21-04:00March 10, 2016|

By Rahul Anand and Paul Cashin

After being low for decades, inflation in India trended higher from the mid-2000s. It reached 10–11 percent by 2008, and remained elevated at double digits for several years. Even though inflation fell by almost half in 2014, inflation expectations have remained high.

High and persistent inflation in recent years has presented serious macroeconomic challenges in India, increasing the country’s domestic and external vulnerabilities. As Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan pointed out at the 8th R.N. Kao Memorial Lecture in 2014, “inflation is a destructive disease … we can’t push inflation under the carpet as a central banker. We have to deal with it.”

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Seizing India’s Moment

IMFBlog2017-04-14T01:45:27-04:00March 16, 2015|

By iMFdirect

As many countries around the world are grappling with low growth, India has been marching in the opposite direction. The IMF’s Managing Director Christine Lagarde gave a speech at Lady Sri Ram College in New Delhi to talk about the global economy, India’s economy, and how quality of growth can benefit women, the poor, and the youth of India.

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India’s Investment Slowdown: The High Cost of Economic Policy Uncertainty

IMFBlog2017-04-14T02:07:14-04:00March 25, 2014|

By Rahul Anand and Volodymyr Tulin

India, after witnessing spectacular growth averaging above 9 percent over the past decade, has started to slow in the last few years. The slump in infrastructure and corporate investment has been the single biggest contributor to India’s recent growth slowdown.

India’s investment growth, averaging above 12 percent during the last decade fell to less than one percent in the last two years. What is especially worrisome is that more and more investment projects are getting delayed and shelved, while the pipeline of new projects has become exceptionally thin.

This slowdown has sparked an intense public debate about its causes. Some commentators, including representatives of the business community, argue that high interest rates, which raise financing costs, are the major culprit, dampening investment. Others maintain that interest rates are only partly responsible for the current weak levels of investment, suggesting that a host of other factors, particularly on the supply side, are at play.

Our new Working Paper seeks to shed some light on the reasons behind this investment malaise. Using a novel index of economic policy uncertainty—an innovation in our analysis—we find that heightened uncertainty regarding the future course of broader economic policies and deteriorating business confidence have played a significant role in the recent investment slowdown.

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For Richer, Not Poorer: Energy Subsidies in India

IMFBlog2017-04-15T13:35:17-04:00June 24, 2013|

By David Coady and Thomas Richardson

Many countries seek to protect poorer households by subsidizing the consumption of fuel products. However, recent IMF research shows that fuel subsidies are both inefficient and inequitable, including in India.

But what about India? Are fuel subsidies also anti-poor? Sadly, yes. A new IMF working paper shows that India’s fuel subsidies are both fiscally costly and socially regressive.

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India’s Economy: Stamina Is The Name Of The Game

IMFBlog2017-04-15T13:56:52-04:00February 21, 2013|

by Laura Papi and Rahul Anand*

So far 2013 has been a breath of fresh air in terms of economic news: financial markets have rallied and economic indicators have started to surprise on the upside. In India, the rupee has strengthened and the Bombay Stock Exchange index (Sensex) crossed the 20,000 mark for the first time in two years. Industrial production has started picking up.

So is India’s growth about to go back to 8-9 percent? The short answer is no. But we need to look back to understand why India’s growth has decelerated to a decade low and why the slump, which has hit investment particularly hard, has persisted for over a year. As structural problems are at the root of the slowdown, so structural reforms must be at the core of the solution.

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India Can Revive Investment by Learning from Itself

IMFBlog2017-04-15T14:07:18-04:00June 6, 2012|

By Laura Papi and Kiichi Tokuoka*

India’s investment, the main driver of economic growth in the mid-2000s when the country was growing in excess of 9 percent a year, has been sluggish for the past five years.

Private consumption is growing at a rate comparable to pre-crisis levels, but investment has not regained its strength.

The culprit is corporate investment: its share in GDP has fallen to about 10 percent—4 percentage points lower than that in 2007/08. This is a serious concern as India needs more supply capacity.

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Subbarao recently said that India’s “non-inflationary rate of growth is about 7 percent,” down from 8.5 percent before the global financial crisis, suggesting that supply constraints—for example in power, coal, and land—have become increasingly binding.

Many reasons have been put forward to explain the investment malaise.

(more…)

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