Four key reforms undertaken by India this year dwarfs even US measures,says FM

Finance minister P Chidambaram has claimed four financial sector reforms achieved by India in this year dwarfed those made by even the US.

In his lecture at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace at Washington DC,the minister said each of these were of massive scale but has gone unnoticed. Among these he included the Indian Financial Code proposed by the Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission. This is a law which dwarfs the scope of the Dodd-Frank Act.

He also pointed out that the subject of commodity futures has now moved to the ministry of finance something which not even the United States has achieved despite the 2008 crisis. Further,the Indian Parliament has also passed the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority Law as well as the new Companies Act. He said the pension sector now includes 6 million beneficiaries making it one of the largest social security net anywhere in the world.

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Each of these four was a huge project involving enormous planning and preparation. All these projects have been largely bipartisan. We have dug in through these years,chipped away at the objections,cultivated the technical capacity,and built consensus,through which we are now able to reap the fruits of the long years of labour, he said.

The minister likened the capacity of the economy to a young girl of age 21,who started her labour market career in 1991,now has 21 years of experience in a competitive and globalised market economy. She has dealt with modern technology,foreign companies,and a truly competitive domestic environment. The forty-somethings of India today are qualitatively superior to the older cohorts who grew up in a closed economy and did not face modern technology or foreign companies or competition.