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India will need to undertake a lot more reforms to continue its growth trajectory and make sure that enough jobs are created in the country, IMF deputy managing director Gita Gopinath, IMF deputy managing director Gita Gopinath said .
Addressing an event as reported by PTI, Gopinath further said that India will be required to reduce import tariffs if it wants to be an important player in the global supply chains.
later on, First Deputy Managing Director IMF Gita Gopinath also called on the Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in New Delhi
“The significant improvements have been made by the government over the years in terms structural reforms.”
While noting that the world is in an environment where trade integration has been questioned, Gopinath said it is important for India to remain open for global trade.
“Tariff rates in India are higher than in its other peer economies. If it wants to be an important player on the world stage and an important part of global supply chains, it is going to require reducing those tariffs,” the eminent economist said.
Gopinath said it is a tremendous aspiration to get to a developed country status but it does not happen automatically, and requires ongoing, consistent efforts, pretty broad scale, across many areas to deliver on that.
“India has grown well in terms of its overall growth rate, and at 7 per cent, it is the fastest growing major economy in the world.
“The question is, how does one keep up the momentum and raise it further so that you can increase per capita incomes in India to get to being an advanced economy,” she said.
Responding to a question on taxation, she said India has parallels with other developing countries, where most of the tax revenue that is collected is indirect taxes and not direct taxes, not in form of income taxes.
“We have been advising other developing countries too, that it is helpful to broaden the personal income tax base and so that you can have more income coming from there,” she said.
