ARCHIVED MEDIA RELEASE
PA/23/2004 29 September 2004
Reforms offer significant opportunities for India: Professor Ross Garnaut
There is great opportunity for India to build on its achievements of the past few years by further dismantling barriers to international trade, according to eminent Australian economist, Professor Ross Garnaut AO.
Delivering the third Sir John Crawford lecture in New Delhi on Tuesday, 29 September on the theme "India, China and Australia: Lessons from Different Paths in Economic Reform," Dr Garnaut, Professor of Economics at the Australian National University, said that conventional economic analysis had underforecast the full range of benefits flowing from economic reform in India, China and Australia.
Introducing Dr Garnaut, the Australian High Commissioner to India, Ms Penny Wensley AO described Dr Garnaut's impressive career and academic achievements, noting that he had served as the principal economics adviser to a former Australian Prime Minister and also as Australia's Ambassador to China at a significant point in China's history and that of the development of Australia-China relations. She added that, as an economist, academic and policy adviser at the highest levels, Dr Garnaut
had been uniquely placed to observe the impact of reform processes on economic growth.
Dr Garnaut said that the most pronounced effect of reforms had been the growth in exports in the three countries. "For the first extended period since independence, India has been rapidly increasing its share of global trade. From a level of around forty percent of Australian exports in 1980, Indian exports this year may exceed Australia's," added Professor Garnaut.
He noted that the early economic successes of Japan, Korea and Taiwan had been a demonstration to China's leaders of the value of economic reform. In turn, rising labour costs and demographic changes now emerging in China's coastal provinces meant that there were growing opportunities for India to expand its labour-intensive export performance, he said. In response to a question, Professor Garnaut noted that the most effective way to achieve high economic growth was to pursue reform of the domestic economy as well as reforming barriers to international trade.
The Sir John Crawford lecture series is organised jointly by the Australia-India Council (AIC), the Australian High Commission and the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) to commemorate the contributions of well-known Australian scientist, the late Sir John Crawford, who helped pioneer the Green Revolution in India. The lecture and subsequent discussion was chaired by Dr Bimal Jalan, Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha and former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India.
Professor Garnaut is currently Professor of Economics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies in the Australian National University. Besides serving as Australia's Ambassador to China from 1985-88, Dr Garnaut is on the boards of international research organisations in Beijing, Washington, Australia and Indonesia and is also a board member of several large international companies.
For additional details, please contact Mr John Fisher, First Secretary, Australian High Commission, on telephone 51399997.