India no longer a problem economy: RBI governor

Mumbai, Aug 5: Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Raghuram Rajan on Tuesday said India has emerged from the perception of being in crisis and has placed itself as a better place to remain invested.

"I keep telling the international fora that India is not a problem any more. I think there was a perception problem (last year), but I think today that perception also doesn't exist," Rajan said during the customary post-policy interaction with mediapersons at RBI headquarters here. The central bank chose to keep all the key policy rates unchanged, except cutting SLR by 50 basis points to infuse liquidity.

Rajan also said formation of a stable government at the Centre has strengthened the country's position among overseas investors. "Political stability to my mind is worth a tremendous amount, as far as the external situation goes and that is a big change," the governor said, adding both the government and RBI have together tried and improved the macro fundamentals.

Rajan said the fiscal deficit has been kept on a glide path as suggested by the government, the current account deficit has come down from 4.7 per cent of GDP in FY 2013 to 1.5-2 per cent as of today, and the forex reserves have also become healthier and it was well prepared to deal with the inflation. "I think the expectation that we will confront and deal with inflation is much stronger now than it was earlier," Rajan noted.

Rajan said a stable govt at the Centre has strengthened the country's position

The governor said one of the major concerns that investors have is that whether RBI will take away the benefits from the Indian growth story from them by inflating and thereby depreciating the rupee. "No, we have no intent of doing that. We want to bring inflation under control and more like the inflation in other countries so that the rupee is not seen on a continuously weakening path," said the Governor.

PTI