Tamil Nadu Finance Minister Palanivel Thiaga Rajan on Monday said that the State has greatly reduced revenue deficit and will become revenue surplus in the next two years. 

He was delivering the inaugural address at ‘Celebrating 25 years of Western Australia’s presence in India’, organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in partnership with the Government of Western Australia.

“We are very comfortable with our growth rates and we will achieve the targeted rate for the next two to three years, as we did in the last year,” Rajan said. 

Noting that the targeted nominal growth rate is 15-16 per cent and the real growth is 8-10 per cent, Rajan said, the numbers had been good so far this year despite the problems of inflation. “We think it (inflation) won’t seriously damage our economy or numbers.”

‘Need to catch up’

Rajan also highlighted that on one hand the Australia-India trade is growing, although not at the pace of the overall economic growth rate of India, on the other hand trade between Western Australia and India has not really kept up with the rest of Australia and such trade meetings can improve that. 

Stressing the importance of federalism, Rajan said while the policies are framed at national levels, at the end of the day, policy execution boils down to individual companies and entities which are mostly state-based. 

“From that perspective, Tamil Nadu is the second largest economy and third largest in exports. We account for 6 percent of the country’s population but contribute 10 per cent to the country’s economy, 12-13 percent of the country’s taxes,” Rajan said. 

Australia is a very large country with a small population, aging, huge pension investments and huge need for long duration assets like infrastructure and fixed income while India is a capital starved country with need for investments in development, the Finance minister said. 

‘Partner in multiple areas’

In his address, Roger Cook MLA, Deputy Premier, Western Australia, said Tamil Nadu has time again proved that it can deliver economic reforms and the State produces more wind power than Denmark or the Netherlands. 

Cook said Western Australia is a high income, export-oriented economy and that it can work closely with Tamil Nadu in areas like healthcare, education, life sciences, renewable energy among others.

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