Raghuram believes India to be more successful, influential in future

Delivering the fourth CK Prahalad Memorial Lecture hosted by the Ananta Aspen Centre in Mumbai, RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan said that India can be far more successful and far more influential than it is today.

During the event, Rajan reflected on the theme "Reforming the Financial Sector".

In his special address, Rajan stressed that in difficult times, environment for growth has to be achieved in the right way by working hard towards recovery and aiming at sustainable growth.

"While the monetary policy will be accommodative there is room to expand sustainable growth potential. By continuing with reforms that the government and regulators have announced a sustainable growth potential can be achieved," he added.

He further asserted that the RBI would focus on keeping the interest rates low in the near term as well as future to have a moderate interest rate regime to help borrowers as well as the savers.

He also suggested that India must resist special interest rates for targeted stimulus, long tax breaks, subventions, directed credit, all of which historically rendered industry un-competitiveness with government over extended and country incapable of gaining its rightful position among nations.

Elaborating on various aspects, Rajan talked about the need to foster competition and innovation; creating hospitable environment to those who don't belong to the club; dealing with distress for improving structures; and strengthening human capital in the financial sector.

The event was also attended by Rahul Bajaj, Chairman, Bajaj Auto Limited. In his remarks he spoke about financial sector reforms that should be a continuous process aligned and future ready.

He further elaborated that the role of reforms pertaining to financial sector should be to aligned among the multiple regulators so as to simplify, enable innovation and productivity in business for the benefit of customers and shareholders, stabilize the regulatory environment, create consistent and visible guidelines, and reduce risk amongst market participants and in the overall system in general and upgrade skills within the regulators through a healthy interaction and cross-pollination with private sector.