New Delhi: The member of Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC – PM) Surjit Bhalla on Tuesday praised Narendra Modi government and crowned BJP’s tenure at Centre as the ‘best year’ of Indian economy. Bhalla also favoured more key reforms needed to be undertaken. However, the EAC member also noted that although the macroeconomic parameters have shown good performance in the last four years, there are concerns about bad loans and part of the problem can be attributed to the RBI Monetary Policy Committee’s (MPC) decision to keep interest rates high. “If you look at any macro parameters then these (Modi government’s four years) are the best four years of the Indian economy…so without a doubt, the macro performance is better, that is not to say everything is working or everything is fine,” he told PTI in an interview adding that we have the NPA crisis that by all account is a lot worse now as a share of GDP or as a share of loans.

“And there are reasons why that is grown up and I think in my opinion the tight monetary policy that has been followed by the MPC is in some part to blame for the fact that the NPAs have risen,” Bhalla said further. PM Modi-led NDA government came into power after posing a landslide victory in Lok Sabha elections in 2014. Further speaking about what more reforms can be taken by the Modi and his cabinet, he said the government should consider income transfer instead of higher minimum support price (MSP) and loan waivers.

“We should remove all bans on exports and imports on agricultural goods and we should move towards income transfer for the farmers, like it is in Telangana rather than doing it through MSP,” Bhalla said. When asked about the relentless dip in value of Indian currency against the US dollar, the economist said that rupee fall has not been beneficial for the Indian exports.

Later in his interaction with the agency, Bhalla also pitched for privatisation of public sector undertakings, saying there are very little arguments for government running businesses. “Story around the world is more and more privatisation not less and less…Air India should be privatised. Government can keep ownership in it but certainly should not be managed by the government,” he added.

(With agency inputs)