Innovative India Must Capture All Segments Of Financial Market To Fuel Growth: IMF

The general lesson from the COVID-19 crisis, the IMF official said, is that when the terrible adverse shock hits one need to aggressively supply liquidity.

India is on the right track and is innovating on the policy side, including on digital identity and payments, but it also needs to capture all the segments of the financial market and institutions to make sure that every piece fits together like a puzzle to fuel growth in the country, according to a top IMF official. "The goal is to have an economy and a financial system that can absorb shocks. ..Balance sheets can be better managed, Non-Performing Loans (NPLs) can be better managed," Tobias Adrian, Director of the Monetary and Capital Markets Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) told PTI in an interview. The non-bank financial system can be better seen, and capital markets have to be deepened and made more robust, he said during the last week''s annual Spring meeting of the IMF and the World Bank. Of course, there is the whole fintech agenda as well, which is important in India as it is everywhere else in the world. "We are in the technological revolution in payment space. And I think India has been path-breaking in many of these technologies and payment systems. Now there is lending that is done in India that is not done anywhere else because the infrastructure is quite strong in this area. But of course, more can be done," Adrian said in response to a question.