BackIndia to see ‘some important’ reforms in next 6 months: Basu
India to see ‘some important’ reforms in next 6 months: Basu
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Washington: After the furore over his remarks to a think tank here, chief economic advisor Kaushik Basu feels India will see “some important" reforms in the next six months, including on subsidies and may be partial diesel decontrol and FDI in retail.
Basu, whose remarks on Wednesday that no big ticket reform is possible till 2014 elections raised a political flutter back home, said there is a serious risk of another European crisis in 2014 and appropriate measures need to be taken to avert another global economic crisis.
“Among the reforms that will happen, I hope, is, subsidy reform. The finance minister talked about this in his budget. We will try to use the UID system that we are developing to cut down leakage in subsidy," he said in an interview to PTI.
“In India the leakage is so big that if we can cut this down, it will help cut down our fiscal deficit ... So that’s a very important reform, which I think will happen," he said.
On FDI in multi-brand retail, he said, “you can’t be 100% sure, but I feel that it’s very likely that it will happen. This can be a big boost to Indian farmers and small producers. It will also have an uplifting on investor confidence."
The other one, which is more difficult politically, is diesel decontrol, Basu said. “May be what can happen is a partial decontrol. This is not a very well defined term. There are different kinds of partial decontrol that you can have.
“What we should ideally do is to have a small subsidy that is fixed per litre. This will partially shelter the consumer but will allow the rise and fall of global price to be mirrored in India. This is essential for market efficiency," Basu said.
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