Market Regulation Needed, But Not Protectionism: Pranab
India has said that financial market needs to be regulated, but protectionism of any kind should come up in the name of regulation.
“We shall have to strike a balance. First of all, I would like to… in the name of the financial regulation and to regulate the markets and as I started off, I mentioned protectionism need not come. Yes, there is a need of regulating the financial market,” Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said in an interview.
“At the other side of the picture, these instruments need not be used to devise protectionism in some forms. Therefore, there too, we shall have to keep in view the federal reserves – the larger social interests – interests of the society as a whole, not fragmented and fractured internally,” he said.
Mukherjee noted that there is no consensus among major economies on the lessons learnt from the current global crisis. He said: “But if we look at the way G-20 responded and we have ourselves been made to address only those issues where there is the possibility of consensus.”
The minister opined that G-20 should not raise up those issues where consensus is not reached so far. “That there should not be, in the name of financial agreement…it should not be too much constructionist policies in the grab of another form of protectionism,” he said.
Responding to a question, Mukherjee said that India shall have to come back to the fiscal conservatism. “That’s why in my medium term plan, I have indicated that I am ending the year with a 6.8 per cent of fiscal… but I will come around to 5.5 and four per cent in the next two years,” he said.
