India comes up trumps on fiscal prudence: IMF

These countries have managed a unique achievement — being able to compress their fiscal balance at the pace at which India has managed it for the year 2012-13, according to data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Global data from 2006 show governments in countries outside the OPEC bloc (oil producing nations) consider their job well done if they manage to reduce their deficit by an average of 0.6 percentage points of their respective gross domestic product (GDP).

Compared to that, finance minister P Chidambaram’s team has touched nearly one percent age point deficit reduction score this time.

For instance in Asia the pace of improvement in fiscal balance has averaged 0.5 per cent since 2009 when the deficits peaked at 2.8 per cent of GDP.

Among the advanced bloc among European nations the pace of improvement has been the same, again since 2009 when it had peaked at 3.9 per cent . Only in 2011 did the bloc of the triple A rated economies make a huge effort and slash their deficit by 1.5 per cent.

The same picture is evident in the G-20 bloc too that includes the United States, Japan and Canada.

The best performance of the bloc has been a 1.3 percentage point improvement in their fiscal balance again in the year in the immediate aftermath of the debt crisis in the continent.

The chart alongside,

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