The Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) hosted a Seminar on Fiscal Transparency in India: Building Subnational Reporting on Monday, July 3, 2023, 11:30 am – 1:00 pm IST. Attendees joined in-person at the CSEP Auditorium (6 Jose P Rizal Marg, 2nd Floor, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi – 110021) and online via Zoom. The seminar was also streamed live on YouTube.

About the event:

At CSEP, we have been working on various issues relating to India’s fiscal architecture, and particularly its public financial management system, thereby building on the work done by the 15th Finance Commission. In this regard, we have looked at the Union’s significant efforts to unify and bring transparency to fiscal reporting, and to explore how States can also move in this direction. Such a reporting framework would bring about a real-time understanding of the public finances of the general government and the resources that are actually available for achieving priority fiscal objectives. This seminar will elaborate on these issues, and will commence with a brief presentation of our recent paper on off-budget borrowings, titled “An Analysis of Off-Budget Borrowings by Indian Governments and their Legal Context.”

With this event, we brought together the following distinguished speakers to share their thoughts on achieving transparency in fiscal reporting across India’s governments, with a special focus on State governments.

Chair:

Rakesh Mohan is President Emeritus and Distinguished Fellow at CSEP. Previously, he was Senior Fellow at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, Yale University, Professor at Yale’s School of Management, and Distinguished Consulting Professor at Stanford University. Closely associated with the Indian economic reforms process since the late 1980s, he has served in senior roles including as the Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, Secretary, Economic Affairs and Chief Economic Adviser, Ministry of Finance.

Moderator:

Anoop Singh is Distinguished Fellow at CSEP and has been Member of the 15th Finance Commission of India. Previously, he was Director of the Asia Pacific Department and of the Western Hemisphere Department at the International Monetary Fund. He has also worked as a Special Adviser to the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, and taught at Georgetown University as Adjunct Professor.

Panelists:

B.V.R. Subrahmanyam is the Chief Executive Officer of NITI Aayog. An Indian Administrative Service Officer since 1987, he has held important positions in the Governments of Manipur, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Jammu & Kashmir, and has also worked on the Board of the World Bank. He has been Secretary, Ministry of Commerce & Industry; Chief Secretary, Jammu & Kashmir; Principal Secretary, Chhattisgarh and has held positions in the Prime Minister’s Office. He is the author of Conduct in Government and has taught at LBSNAA, Mussoorie.

Vidhu Sood is a civil servant. She belongs to the Indian Audit and Accounts Service and has over 20 years of experience in the areas of public financial management, public sector auditing, financial audit, and capacity building. She has undertaken financial audit of UN Secretariat and international audit assignments at the International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna. She is currently serving as Secretary of the National Financial Reporting Authority, India’s independent audit regulator.

Kandarp Patel is Director at the National Academy of Audit and Accounts, where he teaches courses in public finance, law, policy and government accounts, and also looks after short-term training courses for in-service officers. An Indian Audit and Accounts Service Officer of 2012 batch, he was previously on deputation as a director in the 15th Finance Commission where he worked closely with the Commission in the areas of public finance and fiscal federalism.

Presenters:

Shruti Gupta is a Research Analyst in the Fiscal Governance and Architecture Domain of CSEP’s Growth, Finance & Development Vertical.

Kevin James is a Research Associate in the Fiscal Governance and Architecture Domain of CSEP’s Growth, Finance & Development Vertical.

Concluding Remarks:

Laveesh Bhandari is President and a Senior Fellow at CSEP. He has been leading climate change and sustainability research at CSEP, and has published widely on subjects related to sustainable livelihoods, industrial, economic and social reforms in India, economic geography and financial inclusion. He has taught economics at Boston University and IIT Delhi. He has been the managing editor of the Journal of Emerging Market Finance and worked at the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), New Delhi.

Media

States Need to Focus on Transparency with Regard to their Financial Numbers: NITI Aayog CEO – The Economic Times

States Need to Focus on Transparency with Regard to their Financial Numbers: NITI Aayog CEO – The Financial Express

Please contact Manmeet Ahuja at MAhuja@csep.org for event-related inquiries or Trishna Wahengbam at TWahengbam@csep.org for media inquiries.

All content reflects the individual views of the speakers. The Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) does not hold an institutional view on any subject.