India is the fastest growing economy in the world, low participation of women in the labor force and unemployment among the youth is worrying: IMF.

New Delhi. Krishna Srinivasan, Director, Asia Pacific Department at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), said India remains the fastest growing economy in the world. The country's macroeconomic fundamentals are good. Krishna Srinivasan said in an interview that we are estimating seven per cent growth in fiscal year 2024-25, which will be supported by improvement in rural consumption as crops have been favourable. Despite some fluctuations, inflation is expected to decline to 4.4 percent in financial year 2024-25 due to normalization of food prices.

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Referring to other fundamentals, he said that the fiscal situation is better despite the elections. The position of 'Forex Reserve' is quite good. The macro fundamentals are generally good for India. He suggested that the country's reform priorities after the elections should be in three areas. He said that first of all, there are many questions regarding employment generation in India. I think it is important to implement the labor codes agreed in 2019-20, as they will provide an opportunity to strengthen labor markets while providing social protection to workers.

He said the second thing is that if you want to be competitive, you have to remove some restrictions on trade, because when you liberalize trade, you allow productive companies to survive. There is more competition and it can create jobs. I think it's important that more trade restrictions are removed.

Srinivasan said that ultimately I would say continue the reforms, strengthen the infrastructure, whether it is physical infrastructure or digital infrastructure. This is an important achievement and it will continue with this. However, going forward you will have to focus on agriculture and land reforms. You need to think about strengthening your education and skills.

Stressing the need to invest in skills of the workforce, Srinivasan said India is an economy that can create a lot of jobs in the services sector. It is important to have the right skills for this. Therefore, it is very important to invest in education, skilling the labor forces. In response to a question, Srinivasan said that strengthening the social security system is also a reform. You'll still see a lot of red tape when you talk to people. Improving the business environment will be an important aspect. These are some of the reforms I would prioritize.

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He also expressed concern over the low participation of women in the country's labor force and rampant unemployment among the youth. The Director of the Asia Pacific Department said that many statistics exist, but we all agree that women's participation in the labor force is low and unemployment among youth is very high. Therefore, emphasis should be laid on improving the environment for employment generation.