Extraordinary efforts needed to lift the economy: Uday Kotak

MUMBAI:Billionaire banker Uday Kotak on Tuesday said extraordinary efforts were required to lift the economy and ensure that India’s trend growth does not come down.

Speaking at the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) annual session 2020, Kotak, the association’s president-elect, said that the government, banks and India companies will have to work together to get growth back on track.

“To get growth back, we will need to go back to the basics and see where can we ensure the three real economy agents - the government, business and financial sector can work together .... We will need extraordinary efforts to lift the economy and we cannot assume everything will come back in due course. If we wait for that, a lot of time will elapse before we get there. This needs a little bit of speed, going out there and shaking up things to make things move faster,” he said.

Reacting to the news about Moody’s Investors Service downgrading India’s sovereign rating by a notch, Kotak said that there is an urgent need to get growth back and change the perception that the country’s trend growth is slowing down.

On Monday, the rating agency cut India’s sovereign credit rating to the lowest investment grade with a negative outlook, citing growing risks to the economy from a prolonged period of slower growth amid rising debt and persistent stress in parts of the financial system.

To be sure, Moody’s was always a notch above other agencies in assessing India’s sovereign rating and, hence, had a greater risk of downgrade.

Both Fitch Ratings and S&P Global Ratings have the lowest investment grade rating with stable outlook for India at present.