India's rating upgrade after economic parameters improve: Moody's

Says it will consider a rating upgrade after 12-18 months depending upon improvement in macroeconomic parameters

Pitching for ease of doing business and a stable tax regime to attract investment to India, rating agency Moody's today said any upgrade for the country will depend on consistent improvement in inflation, fiscal deficit and other economic parameters.

"Outlook is based on expectations. Rating upgrade would come when we believe that this expectations would be met and we see that being reflected in macro economic parameters," Moody's Sovereign Rating Analyst Atsi Sheth told PTI.

Earlier this month, Moody's had upgraded India's outlook to positive from stable, but retained the credit rating at the existing level at 'Baa3', just a notch above the junk grade.

Moody's had said it would consider a rating upgrade after 12-18 months depending upon improvement in macroeconomic parameters.

In order to attract private investment, Sheth said the regulatory conditions should be relaxed and tax environment should be made and predictable.

"Making regulatory condition easier, ease of doing business, making tax environment certain and confidence of private sector in infrastructure... The private sector knows demand is there but government policies make it difficult to decide how much to invest, where to invest, how to structure investment... Those are the things (the government needs to focus upon)," she said.

On the performance of the Narendra Modi government, Sheth said it was focusing on economic agenda and has refrained from increasing public expenditure to push growth.

"Our expectation when the government came to power was that things would move slowly, we feel it has behaved the way we had expected it to. One thing we have seen is focusing on economic agenda and resisting urge to use fiscal stimulus. Those two would be positive," she said.