India must fire on all cylinders to reach Viksit Bharat goal: IMF

Krishna Srinivasan urges structural reforms, trade liberalisation, and deeper global integration

To attain the goal of Viksit Bharat by 2047, India needs to grow at 8 per cent by pushing for deep structural reforms, improve business environment, try to integrate into global supply chains and liberalise trade, Krishna Srinivasan, Director, Asia and Pacific Department, International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Thursday.

 

Addressing a press briefing on the Regional Economic Outlook for Asia Pacific in Washington DC, Srinivasan said, “There are many things India needs to do. If you want to really scale up and compete with China and so on, you need to liberalise the trade. You need to make labour laws that much more flexible so that India can scale up.”

 

 

He said that if India reached a trade agreement with the US and tariffs were lower then there was an upside potential to growth next year.

 

“Tariffs do matter. There are many sectors in India which are affected such as garments, leather, gems and jewellery etc. To the extent that they hurt, they’re going to affect employment opportunities in this region,” Srinivasan said.

 

The IMF in its World Economic Outlook released on Tuesday had raised India’s GDP growth forecast for FY 2025-26 by 20 basis points to 6.6 per cent due to “a strong first quarter” more than offsetting the increase in the US tariffs. The Fund revised the growth forecast for FY2026-27 downwards by 20 basis points to 6.2 per cent due to the tariffs.

 

He said that while tariffs were a big shock to the region, India’s fundamentals were strong.

 

Srinivasan said that India had a lot of regulations which impede the ability to unleash the full potential of the private sector.