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Thursday January 8, 2009

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Past Event

A Global Economy and Development Event

A Blueprint for Reforming India’s Financial System

India's Economy, India, Economic Development, Emerging Markets, Financial Markets


Event Summary

India’s recent robust economic growth has propelled it to one of the world’s major emerging economic powers. India’s challenge now is to maintain this high-growth trajectory while providing greater economic benefits and opportunities to a broad swath of its population. Recognizing that reforms to the domestic financial system will be crucial to meet this challenge, India’s government set up a high-level committee last year to lay out a blueprint for the next generation of financial sector reforms.

Event Information

When

Friday, September 12, 2008
2:00 PM to 3:30 PM

Where

Falk Auditorium
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20036
Map

Event Materials


Contact: Brookings Office of Communications

E-mail: events@brookings.edu

Phone: 202.797.6105

On September 12, the day this committee’s report was presented to the Indian prime minister, the Brookings Institution hosted a discussion of the report and debate its implications for sustainable and inclusive growth. Lael Brainard, vice president and director of Global Economy and Development at Brookings, provided introductory remarks and moderated the discussion. One of the authors of the report—Eswar Prasad, senior fellow at Brookings and a professor at Cornell University—outlined the report’s main findings and recommendations. They were joined by Tarun Khanna, Jorge Paulo Lemann professor at Harvard Business School. A question and answer session followed the panel discussion.

Transcript

ESWAR PRASAD: Let me just sum up by saying that I think the Committee largely felt that India’s financial system really is at a turning point right now, because India has been growing very fast. But, in addition, it's becoming a much more complex market-oriented economy, and its integration with the world economy, through both trade linkages and financial linkages, has increased very significantly and is going to continue increasing.

So the vulnerabilities in the system are, in a sense, going to increase. So the options as we see it are either to put some of these reforms in place and have a plan for a much broader set of reforms, which would allow the financial system itself to be a source of job creation, and promote these things that we ultimately care about, like growth, stability, and inclusion. And the risk is that if some of these reforms are not put in place very soon, or if they're taken in a very reactive way, I think with the sophistication and rising openness of India, it's going to become an increasing source of risk.

Participants

Introduction and Moderator

Lael Brainard

Vice President and Director, Global Economy and Development

Featured Speakers

Eswar Prasad

Senior Fellow, Global Economy and Development

Tarun Khanna

Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School


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