Raghuram Rajan Advises Govt To Sell PSUs While Stock Market Is Buoyant

Mumbai: Former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Dr Raghuram Rajan has advised the government to fast-track the process of selling PSUs by taking advantage of the sudden increase in customers in the market.

After a slump caused by COVID-19 pandemic, the market is currently experiencing plenty of trading activity and prices are increasing in commodity space, providing sufficient signals of strength.

Advocating the induction of of K.V. Kamath into the Cabinet, Rajan posed some questions for the government in an interview with CNBC TV18.

“I think the government has talked about reforms. Certainly, the reforms in the agriculture sector look promising if they are carried out, but there are other reforms which have been promised, what has happened? You said the stock market is buoyant, why aren’t we selling public sector firms at this point? Are we waiting for the stock market to come down to start selling more?” he argued.

Rajan also wondered about the delay in preparing for the privatization of entities. “Why haven’t we spent these 4-5 months preparing the entities to be privatized and to sell them, so that we can have more resources to spend on repairing the economy,” Financial Express quoted him as saying.

Rajan emphasized the need to set right medical policies which will provide succour to the nation and help in designing a macro-economic policy. “I understand the enormous efforts going about, the brave warriors such as doctors, and healthcare workers, fighting the COVID-19 pandemic from the front lines, but that is not sufficient. India now has the third-largest number of coronavirus cases in the world,” he said.