International Monetary Fund (IMF) managing director Christine Lagarde on Monday said that women can be great contributors to the Indian economy.
Lagarde, who met Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, discussed the devolution of the union budget and fiscal consolidation.
“I was also able to discuss empowerment of women and the fact that the woman can be a huge contributor to the Indian economy. And with the Finance Minister, we had really good discussion about tax issues, as I was the finance minister myself, and we had a chance to discuss how devolution of budget can actually work with the states, and how to keep fiscal consolidation on the radar screen of everybody,” Lagarde said.
Lagarde said that India’s fiscal consolidation was good and called for ‘macroeconomic stability’ in the country to encourage investors.
“There is a degree of fiscal consolidation which is good, I was very impressed by the fact that the state authorities also abide by the fiscal principles and the discipline. I think it should be anchored in the medium term in order to give macroeconomic stability framework to the country in order to continue to encourage investors and for India to remain bright spot of the global economy,” she said.
Earlier in the day, Lagarde hailed India as the ‘one bright spot in an otherwise gloomy global economy’.
The IMF managing director also paid a courtesy call to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. (ANI)