Indeed, our distinguished panel of experts spoke in glowing terms about India’s path to sustainable growth. While panellists acknowledged some of the challenges, they neatly put them into an overall positive context and they delivered a broadly upbeat outlook. The macroeconomic data certainly stacks up on a two to three-year view as the reform process continues. The government is pushing ahead with a spectrum of new measures, such as the much-vaunted goods and services tax that will add signific

Marie Diron, Moody’s: We’re also seeing a shift in the composition of expenditure, from public expenditure towards capex. That will be positive if it is a catalyst for private sector investment, because while the numbers are impressive, Indian numbers generally are because the economy is so large. But in relation to the size of the economy it is not so impressive. Given the constraints on the budget, the government cannot trigger this investment revival on its own. It can only be the catalyst. P

Marie Diron, Moody’s: The bankruptcy resolution framework will be a big step forward when it is effectively implemented, which is going to take some time in practice. A lot of professionals need to be recruited and the framework still requires a few details to be confirmed, but once it is all in place it should really encourage investment. We have heard about the pick-up in FDI, but what strikes me is that domestic investment has been a lot weaker. We can guess what some of the hurdles to invest

IFR: India is undergoing some radical, root-and-branch reform. How do you see the state of the Indian economy? Where is the Indian economy today and where is it going in the short to medium term? What are the key goals?   Soumya Kanti Ghosh, State Bank of India: I would like to step back a little. In 2013 if we had looked at the numbers we would have seen India had a current account deficit that was close to 5% of GDP. Today that number is trending below 1%. In 2012 the deficit was close to 5.7%

David Rasquinha Export-Import Bank of India David Rasquinha is deputy managing director of Export-Import Bank of India and has been at the bank since 1985. He has had wide-ranging exposure to export credit, having worked in treasury, multilateral agency-funded projects, planning and research, risk management, trade and project finance, and project exports. Between 1999 and 2004, he was resident representative at the bank’s Washington DC office. Bejoy Das Gupta Institute of International Finance