Press Release No. 15/118

Press Release: IMF Managing Director Meets Prime Minister Modi, Announces High Level Regional Conference

March 17, 2015

IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde today concluded a two-day visit to India and issued the following statement:

“I am delighted to have returned to India these past few days to see first-hand the remarkable dynamism of this great country.

“In Delhi, I met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, and other senior government officials. I also had a courtesy meeting with President Pranab Mukherjee. In Mumbai, I met with Governor Raghuram Rajan and his colleagues at the Reserve Bank of India.

“In my discussions with the Indian authorities, I noted that India is a bright spot in the world economy and is increasingly helping to drive global growth. Helped by positive policy actions that have improved confidence, and by lower global oil prices, India is set to revitalize investment and accelerate the pace of structural reforms. In this context, we discussed the challenges India faces in building infrastructure, continuing along the path of fiscal consolidation, durably lowering inflation, and capturing its demographic dividend. We are looking forward to helping build policy capacity in India through additional training initiatives and enhanced technical assistance.

“The Reserve Bank of India is to be commended for skillfully conducting its monetary policy, and managing to bring down inflation considerably. The recent move to introduce a flexible inflation targeting framework is a clear positive and will help deliver low and stable inflation.

“During my visit I also had an interesting exchange of perspectives with women leaders in the financial sector and other senior representatives from civil society, including on issues such as India’s entrepreneurial spirit, reform implementation, and efforts to sustain the country’s high growth potential and improve its productivity. We agreed on the need to strengthen the role of women in the economy and increase India’s low rates of female labor force participation.

“I am pleased to announce that the IMF and the Government of India will co-host a high-level Regional Conference, Advancing Asia, in March 2016 in India. The aim of this conference will be to bring together leaders from across Asia to explore ways to accelerate growth, build the region’s resilience to shocks, and share the benefits more widely among all the populations. We are very much looking forward to listening to our partners in Asia, as well as drawing lessons from the experiences of other countries.

“My dialogue with Indian leaders has convinced me that the conditions are ripe for India to be a key engine of global growth. My message here was that this is India’s moment—it should seize this moment to build a bright economic future of rapid, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth and macroeconomic stability for many years to come.”