IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva has praised India for taking “very decisive” steps to deal with the coronavirus pandemic and its economic consequences and asked the country to do more this year to support an accelerated transformation of the economy. The IMF Managing Director during a global media roundtable on Thursday predicted a less bad outlook for India in the upcoming World Economic Update due to the steps taken by it. “When I called on everybody to stay tuned for January 26, that applies very much to India. You would see a picture in our update that is less bad. Why? Because the country actually has taken very decisive action, very decisive steps to deal with the pandemic and to deal with the economic consequences of it,” Georgieva said.
She also praised India for targeted lockdown and said that the mobility indicators in India are nearly in the country what they were pre-Covid-19, highlighting that the country has seen an economic revival “significantly”. “Then India moved to more targeted restrictions and lockdowns. What we see is that that transition, combined with policy support, seems to have worked well. Why? Because if you look at mobility indicators, we are almost where we were before COVID in India, meaning that economic activities have been revitalised quite significantly,” the IMF chief said. She also lauded the government’s support on the monetary policy, saying that it was better than the average of emerging markets and urged the administration to do more if possible.
Welcoming the fact that India does not give up on structural reforms, she said: “And I’m saying, yes, do it! Because the world change is accelerating and economies have to be agile and adaptable to change… We have to be constantly leaning forward.”At the same time, she said that one of the aspects of India’s reforms that are still lagging is on gender equality. “I want to just stress it is scary to see how we are losing ground on gender equality over these months so fast. Women are front line workers…They are often in the informal economy, help cannot easily reach them, so they are hit,” she said. “Once people start losing jobs, who is to lose jobs first? [Again] women are on the front line. Labour market participation in India for women has been low. It is shrinking…I know the government is paying attention, it is moving in that [direction], but there is so much space to tap into the productive potential of women and the entrepreneurial potential of women,” Ms Georgieva said.
The International Monetary Fund is scheduled to release its World Economic Update on January 26.
