World Bank Group President David Malpass on Saturday called for more reforms and innovation to improve India’s growth rate, PTI reported.

Malpass made the comments during a visit to Delhi where he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and addressed officials at the NITI Aayog.

“What my prescription or suggestions are are that openness to reform, innovation, improvement in government structure allows for faster growth,” PTI quoted him as saying. “I think India has very good platform in doing that because of the experience India had with technology with knowledge as a broad concept within the society. They can help it move forward. It has made several important reforms in the last few years that can still pay off.”

He said India has been affected by the global environment and has slowed from fast growth rates in the past year. The Indian economy is facing a sustained decline in growth. Gross Domestic Product growth rate slipped to a six-year low of 5% in the April-June quarter – the fourth straight quarter of slowdown.

“Prime Minister Modi has a goal of $5-trillion dollar economy,” he said. “It will be assisted by innovation in the financial sector.”

Malpass appreciated Sitharaman’s decision to cut corporate taxes from 35% to 22%.“I think what is to be done is better growth programmes country by country,” he said. “India has taken a good step on the corporate tax rate. That should add to more growth.”

He also congratulated the government on bringing India’s ranking in the World Bank’s annual Ease of Doing Business to 63rd in the latest ranking. He credited the government’s moves to liberalise procedures for registering businesses, facilitating more cross-border trade, and bankruptcy resolution for the increase in ranking.

The World Bank president said one way to improve India’s performance in enforcement of contracts is by ensuring that commercial courts are “adequately resourced at district level”, Mint reported. He also suggested setting up a fast-track commercial dispute resolution mechanism, land data digitisation and contract enforcement protection, among other measures.

Now, follow and debate the day’s most significant stories on Scroll Exchange.