India has been a leader in digitization in recent years and has overcome some of the administrative bottlenecks through increased innovation, a senior International Monetary Fund official has said.
Digitization has taken on greater importance as the world emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, Anner-Marie Gulde-Wolfe, deputy director of the IMF’s Asia-Pacific Department, told reporters at a news conference on Friday.
“As is now well known, India has been a leader in digitization in recent years, particularly with the provision of digital infrastructure… this has increased innovation and overcome some of the administrative bottlenecks that were there before,” she said. .
“Under Covid, there have been significant scars in Asia and elsewhere and digitization promises to be one of the avenues to increase productivity for companies,” he said in response to a question.
“We have some empirical evidence for that. Our next Regional Economic Outlook will have a chapter that looks at the productivity of companies and shows that since the Covid recession, the companies that were at the forefront of digitization have actually performed better. Of course, there is still a long way to go. More progress must be made in reducing the digital divide and increasing digital literacy,” he added.
The IMF has a program that looks at digitization and how it helps governments implement reforms. The IMF is also increasingly providing technical assistance in that area, Gulde-Wolfe said.
He said that the IMF is also working very closely with India on this and that the country is at the forefront of digitizing government services, which was also used during the pandemic to distribute benefits.
In response to a question, Gulde-Wolfe said that in the global context, India, with a growth rate of 6.1 percent, remains a bright spot.
“But it’s absolutely true that you have to see what else can be done and we were talking about scars earlier. So a lot of the issues that need to be addressed are more on the structural side,” he said.
“We don’t see much room for fiscal support given our position on the level of debt,” he said.
Similarly, in monetary policy, given the inflation situation, there has to be a tightening bias there, the IMF official said.
“But it’s important, you know, anything that can be done on the structural front to not create impediments to growth and try to also create an expectation of continued progress,” he said.
“I think that’s really important. But let me go back to the gross markdowns that we’ve seen in other countries, I think India is still in a relatively bright spot,” Gulde-Wolfe said. PTI LKJ DIV DIV
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