Former Niti Aayog vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya has said that Rupee depreciation is not cause to worry and it was pending for a long time. He also said India’s macroeconomic management is sound. He further said that the country’s export has suffered losses due to appreciation in exchange rates.
Panagariya said ‘I am personally very pleased the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has used our foreign exchange reserves prudently in managing the exchange rate’. Besides, the rupee on August 16 slumped to a life-time low of 70.32 to the US dollar on strong demand for the greenback. The rupee on August 24 staged a good recovery to end higher by 20 paise at 69.91 against the US currency.
Expressing optimism over the growth of India economy growth, the former Niti Aayog vice chairman said that he expects the country’s growth rate to cross the 8% mark by the third or fourth quarter of fiscal 2018-19. He said ‘I am confident that in less than ten years we will cross the UK, Germany and Japan to become the third largest economy in the world’.
On the possibilities of populist measures being announced by the Modi government ahead of 2019 general elections, he said that the risk is omnipresent ‘but I do not see this happening’. He said the government has more or less announced its revenue and expenditure trajectories. He also pointed out that Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) in India in 2017-18 has been slightly higher than in 2016-17 and 70% higher than in 2013-14.
