SPEAKING at the release of his book Devaluing to Prosperity, Dr Surjit Bhalla said that the book focused on more than a hundred countries and tried to address the world’s economic problems through the prism of the exchange rate. He admitted the world was in the throes of a deep financial depression and one way to ensure a high rate of growth is for countries to devalue their currencies. He cited the Chinese growth story of undervaluing from strength, which explains its high rate of growth. He forecast that the Chinese growth story would soon hit a wall and its growth rate could dip to as low as five per cent within the next five years due to weak internal economic policies. Turning to India, he blamed the Reserve Bank of India for messing up the exchange rate of the Indian currency following the populist policies of the Central government. Among the distinguished panel of experts at the function were Dr Raghuram Rajan, Chief Economic Advisor, Govt. of India, and Dr Shinji Takagi, professor at Osaka University. The session was moderated by TJ Ninan, Chairman, Business Standard. The book was officially released by Shri P Chidambaram, the Union Finance Minister, who said “it was a provocative work based on many years of research and would be debated for years to come”.
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