 "Sitharaman, Gopinath")
Nirmala Sitharaman, Finance Minister (Left) and Gita Gopinath(Right), dy MD, IMF. Image: Finance ministry’s X account
India will need to undertake more reforms to be able to continue on the path of raising economic growth and to make sure that enough job creation happens in the country, IMF deputy managing director Gita Gopinath said on Saturday.
Addressing an event here, 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.
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.
Referring to the cut in corporate tax rate by the Modi government, Gopinath said although it was helpful it is less the tax rate that matters, but what matters is just making sure that there are no loopholes and there are not too many leakages that happen in terms of tax exemptions.
“It is very important to have sufficient progressivity in your tax system…making sure that you are (India) getting enough from your capital gains tax from your capital income tax is going to be critical,” she said.
Gopinath also suggested that now there is better technology to implement property tax and this is again another area where work is needed.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
First Published: Aug 17 2024 | 6:47 PM IST
