India today said it would open up its financial sector further, but this would happen gradually after putting in place appropriate laws and appointing regulators.‘‘It is our intention to move forward, but at every step the watchword will be caution and placing suitable instruments to prevent financial shocks,’’ Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said in his lecture at the Yale University.‘‘We have taken measured steps in banking, insurance, capital markets, securities markets and the debt markets,’’ he said, adding US banks, insurance firms and other financial intermediaries seem to have realised the opportunities that lie ahead, and have accepted the wisdom of India’s policy to ‘‘hasten slowly’’.There had been considerable interest on the part of US corporations in the Indian financial sector, as this was the sector where Washington’s comparative advantage seemed to lie in the present day, Chidambaram said.The finance minister said India was now coming to a point where its contribution to world economic growth would be significant with a GDP of nearly $800 billion and each 10 per cent rise in India’s GDP would contribute $80 billion to world output.Speaking of his worries, he said: ‘‘I can tell you what I worry about but not because we don’t have the answers. We think we have the answers. What we need to do is continue to grow India at a rate of 7-8 per cent a year, appropriate a large portion of the surpluses to deal with poverty issues, so that even as we grow as an economy, per capita income will rise.’’The FM also spoke on the country’s need for infrastructure, saying energy would play a very critical role. India needed to vastly put 10,000 MW additional generating capacity every year for the next 10 to 15 years.
