Jalan thrashes fixation with fiscal deficit targeting

Bimal Jalan ( former governor of the Reserve Bank of India, on Friday said it’s time to move away from the “fixation” for meeting a fiscal deficit target, saying, “we instead must judge a government on the basis of the outcomes its economic policies achieve.” “There is a fixation somehow among all of us to have a target-related fiscal policy, fiscal deficit, how much it should be, why it should be, and what is the trade-off between what you say growth and inflation and so on,” he said speaking at a seminar at the RBI-promoted IGIDR. “Just ask yourself, does it matter so much, whether it is 3.2 per cent or 3.4 (per cent of GDP). Does it matter for the people of the country?” PTI<