ExclusiveChina's pain is India's pain too, says India's 'rockstar' central bank governor
Celebrated central bank governor says slowdown hurting India as he points to growing interdependence between two Asian giants
China's pain is India's pain too, says its central bank governor, contradicting the country's finance minister who recently said India will not be affected by China's slowdown.
"The Chinese slowdown is a concern for the whole world. There is lower demand for some of our exports to China. But indirectly too, many of the countries are not exporting to China as much as they did and they are buying less from us," said Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan in an interview with the South China Morning Post on Friday.
"But India being a commodity importer, has been helped a bit by cheaper commodities. So the impact hasn't been as bad as it could have been. Still, on the whole, we have been adversely affected by the Chinese slowdown because China's slowdown has impacted global growth and India is very well integrated into the global economy."
India's Finance Minister Arun Jaitley last month told a gathering at Columbia University that India is "not impacted" by the slowdown as "we are not a part of the Chinese supply chain", adding that India could, in fact, become the "additional shoulder" the global economy needs to stand on as China slows.
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Jaitley thus joined some of the other leading lights in India - which fought a war with China in 1962 over an unresolved border - who have suggested the chill in rival China may be an opportunity for India, triggering fiery commentary in Chinese state media.