Full capital account convertibility will make India leading economy

New Delhi: India needs to take many policy measures over a period of time, including moving towards full capital account convertibility, to become a leading global economy, said Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha. "There are many policy measures and many things that we have to do over a period of time, if indeed India has to become a leading global economy.

We have to make it possible for our capital markets to be broader, deeper and for that to happen, capital account convertibility also becomes important," said Sinha. The Minister said that India has became more and more open in the last few years. "Definitely, we have to play our rightful, responsible role in the global economy, we have to move in that direction (capital account convertibility)," said Sinha.

The Minister's statement assumes significance as Reserve Bank (RBI) Governor Raghuram Rajan had recently said that the central bank is looking at allowing full capital account convertibility in a few years. Stating that the RBI is fairly open to capital inflows, the Governor had said: "The only place today that we have some restrictions is inflows into debt, especially very short-term debt." Full capital convertibility means a foreign investor can repatriate his money into his own local currency at will, which is not allowed in the country as of now.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had also recently launched the country's first international finance centre in Gujarat. Full rupee convertibility can go a long way in the effective functioning this global financial services hub. It may be noted that many analysts had credited RBI for its policy of partial capital control, which helped it tide over the impacts of the currency meltdown in many South Asian economies which had full capital convertibility in 1997-98.

In May-August 2013 also, capital control helped the country from going to the dumps following the taper talks by the US Federal Reserve. Even then the country saw as many as over USD 20 billion being pulled out by foreign investors. Following the June 1991 liberalisation, the government and the RBI have been progressively lifting curbs on capital flows, which saw the FII investment into domestic debt rise to USD 31 billion as of now.