Moody’s cites poll to red-flag Narendra Modi government

This comes almost three months after Moody’s raised its India rating outlook to “positive” from “stable”.

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In a report titled ‘Inside India’, which is based on a poll conducted by Moody’s global credit research, the rating agency maintained that while the participants were optimistic about a 7.5 per cent GDP growth for FY’16, its polling results “pointed to some disappointment amongst the audience with regard to the pace of reform under the administration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and increasing concerns about the risk of policy stagnation. Specifically, almost half of the poll respondents identified sluggish reform momentum as the greatest risk to India’s macroeconomic story”.

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Highlighting its concerns over projections of a sub-normal monsoon at a time when the rural economy is already weak, the report stated that this can have a bearing on India’s sovereign rating.

“A sustained soft patch for India’s rural economy would weigh on private consumption and non-performing assets in the agricultural sector, a credit negative for the sovereign and banks,” said Rahul Ghosh, Vice President and Senior Research Analyst at Moody’s.

The rating agency pointed that rural growth, which stood at over 20 per cent in 2011, has been stuck in mid-to-low single digits in 2015 to date. It blamed increased fiscal restraint of the Modi government for the slow rural income growth.

“The slower rural income growth is partly the result of increased fiscal restraint by the central government, which Moody’s believes is unlikely to change in the coming quarters,” said the statement issued by the rating agency.

While the poll participants do not seem very enthused on government’s policy decision-making, Moody’s praised decisions taken by the government and blamed the lag in implementation on the multi-party, federal democratic structure in India.

“While many of the policies are positive for India’s institutional strength, the direct impact of growth-enhancing reforms is only likely to take full effect over a multi-year horizon,” Moody’s said.

Even in the past some leading corporates in India have raised their concerns. Leading industrialist Deepak Parekh had, in an interview to news agency PTI, said that India Inc’s patience was wearing thin with little improvement on the ease of doing business.

R C Bhargava, Chairman, Maruti Suzuki, the country’s largest automobile manufacturer, admitted there was a degree of impatience everywhere, but blamed the bureaucracy for poor implementation.

“People need to realise that in India we have a big issue of implementing things correctly and on schedule. Political leaders can give directions but implementation is done at different levels of bureaucracy and it will take time to change the way the bureaucracy works. You can’t change people’s decade long habits in a few months,” he said.