India immune to debt crisis in Europe: FinMin

NEW DELHI: Finance Secretary Ashok Chawla today said that India is immune to the debt crisis in Greece, and it may actually help the country bag the 'safer haven for global capital' tag.

"As far as India is concerned, the impact on us will be minimal. In fact, in the short run -- that is, purely in the short run -- it might help us in terms of India being regarded as a relatively safer haven," Chawla told reporters on the sidelines of a Assocham function here.

Chawla said that though the Greece crisis could cause some hiccups in the Eurozone, it would not have a major impact on the international financial community.

The European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had, earlier today, agreed on a euro 750-billion bailout package for troubled Eurozone countries.

"I think we are immune. We were immune when there was a much larger international financial crisis. The Greece crisis is much smaller in scale and magnitude to what the world has seen in the last one-and-a-half years," he said.

On the issue of hiking the FII limit in the domestic debt market, Chawla said, "We are looking at that. But that is not just dependent on this issue, it is dependent on a number of factors."

Speaking on inflation, which touched 9.90 per cent in March, he admitted that price rise has been spreading to non-food items for some time now. However, he maintained that the government is aware of the situation, and has taken a number of administrative and policy steps to rein in the problem.

Though he acknowledged that the money expected to come through the 3G auction looks "very very impressive", he said that this would not have any impact on the government's borrowing plans at this point of time.

On day 23 of the 3G auction, the government's revenue crossed the Rs 45,000-crore mark, even as the pan-India bid for radio waves rose to Rs 11,327 crore.