Economic growth in India has picked up in recent years, and like other integrating Asian economies, it too requires large amounts of efficiently intermediated capital to sustain its development. However, an important constraint to financial reform has been dealing with the vestiges of financial “repression”— deliberate policies that crowd out the private sector from credit markets and limit the ability of financial markets to develop as intermediaries for saving. Years of deficit financing have led to large-scale intervention and state ownership of financial intermediation. High statutory reserve requirements, extensive directed lending to priority sectors (including mandatory holdings of government.
