IMF sees India's debt ratio at 84% of GDP

Washington: India's debt ratio is projected to be 84 per cent of its GDP by the end of 2022, which is higher than many emerging economies, but its debt is a little bit easier to sustain, a senior IMF official has said. Stressing that it is important for India to now have a very clear medium-term objective on the fiscal, Paolo Mauro, Deputy Director, Fiscal Affairs Department, International Monetary Fund, said there's still not a whole lot of clarity on the fiscal anchor. "It would be very important to give reassurance to people and to investors that things are under control, and things are going to become less vulnerable over time," Mauro, told PTI in an interview. "In terms of the debt ratio, India right now at the end of 2022, we're projecting it at about 84 per cent of GDP. That is higher than in many emerging economies," he said.

IMF praised the Reserve bank of India (RBI) for tightening the monetary policy to curb inflation in the country. "The RBI has appropriately been tightening to fight inflation as the inflation is above target, and since May, if my memory serves me well, it sort of delivers 190 basis points rate hikes and we think further tightening is needed to bring inflation to its target," Garcia Pascual, Deputy Division Chief of the Monetary and Capital Markets Department of the IMF, told reporters at a news conference here. Tobias Adrian, Financial Counsellor and Director of the Monetary and Capital Markets Department of the IMF, said that monetary policy has tightened in India, similar to other emerging markets as well, where inflation has been above target.

When everyone is slowing down in terms of economic growth, India has not remained unimpacted, but is doing better and is in a relatively bright spot compared to other countries, a top International Monetary Fund (IMF) official said on Tuesday. Just look at the global conjuncture right now, which is the overarching problem, IMF Director of Asia and Pacific Department, Krishna Srinivasan, said, adding that the growth was "slowing across many parts of the world even as inflation is rising".