That was how James Gordon, representative of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in India, Thursday paid a left-handed compliment to India's swelling foreign exchange reserves, enough to sustain 15 months' imports. "Frankly, something must have been done right," Gordon said, addressing a seminar on "The Role of IMF in India", organised by the Indian Institute of Planning and Management here. He said with such a "comfortable" foreign exchange reserves position, India was not in need of any assistance from the Washington-based multilateral body. He said the IMF's role in India had been considerably scaled down since the early 1990s -- the last time the country had borrowed to overcome the balance of payment crisis. The IMF official also praised India's cautious approach to liberalising capital account convertibility. "As of now, IMF's role in India is that of surveillance," he said and added that such surveillance was focussed on those economies that "carried vulnerability to crises". He said India's short term credit of $10 billion was "not that big a problem" because of the country's huge foreign exchange reserves, but expressed concern over the rising fiscal deficit and the proportion of internal debt to the gross domestic product (GDP). Gordon said following the September 11 terror attacks in the U.S., efforts had been made to safeguard the stability and integrity of the international financial system through better surveillance of offshore banking centres, money laundering and financing of terrorism. "Increased attention is also being given to debt management and sustainability," he said.
Source: IANS