Thursday, September 22 2005 10:13 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Washington: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has urged India to make rapid progress on a broad range of reforms to achieve ambitious goals of creating jobs and reducing poverty.

The IMF Annual Report on India said the financial agency, in its policy dialogue with the Indian authorities during the financial year 2005 'stressed the need for rapid progress on a broad range of reforms to enable India to build on recent successes and realize its ambitious objectives especially creating jobs and reducing poverty.'

The Fund also urged the authorities to pursue fiscal adjustment, preempt inflationary pressures, accelerate trade liberalization and labor market reform, and further open the financial sector.

Authorities "Are taking steps to address these issues. They remain committed to meeting the medium-term targets of the fiscal responsibility law," it said.

India has appropriately tightened monetary policy, lowered tariffs, opened up important sectors to foreign direct investment, and announced a roadmap for banking reform, the IMF annual report said.

In addition, India participated in the Fund's pilot study on public investment, which stressed on the need to raise public savings, further improve the management of the public investment programme, strengthen capital markets, address regulatory risks that limit private participation, and improve the accounting and reporting of debt-like obligations that arise under off-budget schemes for infrastructure funding, it noted.