‘Financial crisis, a challenge for reforms’

Wednesday, November 5, 2008 at 5:11 am

In the wake of global financial crisis, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said India will face challenges pursuing its economic reforms and shaping policies concerning security and foreign aspects to ensure conducive external environment for its transformation.

“Recent developments, particularly the challenges confronting the global financial system, have thrown up a qualitatively different set of questions to security and foreign policy practitioners,” Mukherjee said in a lecture on India’s security challenges at the National Defence College.

From India’s perspective, he noted, the nation needed to see how best to manage the crisis while positioning itself to play a major role in any future global financial or political structure.

“The immediate challenge will be to continue with economic reforms, striking a balance between financial stability, price stability and maintaining growth rates,” he said.

However, the long-term challenge would be to fashion a set of policies encompassing both the security and foreign dimension such that India could ensure an external environment conducive to its transformation and continued development, he added.

He said the most obvious was the unprecedented linkage between economic stability and security policy, pointing out that in the recent weeks the world had witnessed countries seeking international financial assistance to stave off financial and economic collapse.

“Elsewhere, falling oil prices have dampened political confidence and muted foreign policy and security orientations. In addition, we also are hearing protectionist voices, as previous notions about globalisation bringing in all around benefits are being questioned,” Mukherjee said.

India had initiated economic liberalisation in early 1990s under P V Narasimha Rao’s Congress government. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, considered the architect of the economic reforms, then served as Finance Minister in Rao’s Cabinet.

Stating that the manner in which the present events reshaped the structural contours of the world could be difficult to predict, the External Affairs Minister said it could be concluded with some certainty that India would be required to address new challenges in the coming years, the biggest of which would be the management of global interdependence.

(Agencies)

( This post is from an independent writer. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not endorsed by APakistanNews.Com.)

‘Financial crisis, a challenge for reforms’

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