India has learned to live in era of global turmoil: Jaitley

PTI
HONG KONG, SEPTEMBER 22

Confident about India sailing through global turmoil without much adverse impact, finance minister Arun Jaitley has said the government is focussing on strengthening the country’s real economy and harnessing its true growth potential of 8-9 per cent.
“I am one of those who believes that we have learnt to live in the era of turmoil. Whether it was Greece crisis, or China devaluation or speculations about rate hike by the US Fed.
“Everyday, something or the other impacts the market. As policy planners, we can not really hedge our bets (on these factors),” Jaitley said.
The finance minister, who was here for the second leg of his four-day visit to the two top global financial centres — Singapore and Hong Kong — said there would certainly have been an impact if the US central bank had raised the rates.
“That impact on the market does create an optical impression of some kind of a turmoil,” he said, adding “the policy makers should not be perturbed by such transient factors.”
“That’s why my own approach has been that rather than concentrating on what will happen in other economies and the subsequent impact on our market, we should concentrate on real economy in India and we should concentrate on our own policies, investments and on our own growth targets and on keeping our own inflation under control.
“Markets will keep moving up and down. Even if change had taken place in the Fed rate, the market would have been impacted for some period of time and then would have stabilized. That happened after what happened in China,” Jaitley said while interacting with journalists during his Hong Kong visit that ended on Monday.
He also dismissed suggestions that the business confidence in India was weak and said that “facts speak otherwise”. “There have been a series of reforms. The government has become far more decisive. There is a lot of economic activity that is happening and even in the midst of the global economic slowdown, our figures are much better.
“India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world and certainly it can’t be amid any disappointment or disillusion,” he said.
Public investments have gone up significantly by about 39 per cent and FDI this year has improved by 49 per cent from the previous year, he added.
“Our domestic private investment has to become stable. That is down because our companies had over-stretched themselves and had excess capacity. I don’t think they lack confidence. In an economy which has grown by 7-7.5 per cent despite adverse global situation, the companies do not lack confidence.
“If our rates come down a little more, then manufacturing, infrastructure and real estate also stand a chance of picking up,” he said.
When asked if he was satisfied with this level of growth, Jaitley said India has become extremely aspirational.
“It is so aspirational now that even 7-7.5 per cent does not excite India anymore. So, India would be far more comfortable if it graduates from 6-8 per cent growth to 8-9 per cent growth,” he said.
To a question on whether that kind of growth rate was feasible, Jaitley said, “In a favourable global environment, if we had slightly better monsoon … we continue on the path of structural reforms, I think it is certainly feasible.”
The minister said that the ability to restore normalcy in times of global turmoil gets much better if a country’s own systems are strong and in order.
“Therefore, the sound policy is to concentrate on real economy rather than being just impacted by what external factors do to the market,” he added.
He further said that the world has become an uncertain place because traditionally strong economies are facing their own challenges and everyone will have to live up to a situation where many unpredictable things can happen.
“Who would have thought that oil prices would go down to $45 level, but it did and it had its own consequences. Tomorrow, if it starts moving up, we will have to brace ourselves for that situation.
“Therefore, my priority as a policy planner in an emerging economy is that I must concentrate on making my own policies and my own basis extremely sound or as sound as I can,” Jaitley said.
He also dismissed the perception that reforms were slow.
“There are one or two decisions that the opposition is trying to block, but we will either push those decisions on the strength of our parliamentary numbers or we will follow an alternative route to achieve the same objective,” he said, while referring to GST and land laws.
“The idea is that the government must follow a clear path of reforms which can push the growth rates and the government must not dither. These things happen in all democracies, including in the US, where even Presidential proposals are blocked for years together. In India, it has happened only for a few months,” he added.
When asked what was the message he has given to investors in Singapore and Hong Kong to convince them to invest in India, Jaitley said, “First of all, people have not stopped investing.”
“People were disappointed when the last government was in power and therefore the investment levels had come down. Investment levels have picked up again, but it is extremely important to also interact with these investors and understand what are the issues which are troubling them.
“Additionally, the kind of the things we have done and the kind of things which are in pipeline in India, that have to be communicated to the investors. Therefore, some impressions which erroneously go through, have to be corrected.
“I think this has been a great opportunity that I had in Singapore and Hong Kong, and the response from the investors has been by and large quite encouraging,” he said.
Jaitley said that a lot of people in financial sector were concerned about GST and they also want bankruptcy law.
“They were concerned about multiplicity of permissions. By and large, they are quite satisfied with the fact that taxation reforms in India are moving in the right direction,” he said.