Tariff battle will worsen financial system greater than COVID-19 pandemic: Kerala Finance Minister Ok.N. Balagopal

Kerala Finance Minister Ok.N. Balagopal has warned that Kerala wants to organize effectively to deal with the ‘tariff battle’ looming over the financial system, propelled by the latest tariff insurance policies of the United States and different world gamers.

Mr. Balagopal was talking after inaugurating a two-day seminar ‘Post-COVID Development Challenges and Response: Kerala via the lens of State budgets’ organized by the Gulati Institute of Finance and Taxation (GIFT) in Thiruvananthapuram on Tuesday (August 5, 2025).

“It needs to be examined how these insurance policies influence the Indian financial system and particularly Kerala, whose exports cowl a number of sectors,” he mentioned.

The Finance Minister prompt that the tutorial neighborhood organise a roundtable dialogue on the implications of those insurance policies for India and Kerala to generate readability on what lies forward for the financial system.

‘Dangerous scenario’ forward

Mr. Balagopal mentioned he perceived a “harmful scenario” forward, referring to latest calls for that ‘India ought to cut back its tariffs.’

“The tariff battle looming over us will worsen our financial system additional,” he mentioned, including that the inflow of imports at low tariffs would create an financial scenario “a lot worse than the COVID-19 pandemic.”

M.A. Oommen, eminent economist and Distinguished Professor at GIFT who chaired the session, underscored the necessity for Kerala to deal with the safety and conservation of its wealthy biodiversity, deal with the spectre of corruption and nurture the general public sector enterprises. Mr. Oommen lauded Mr. Balagopal for an “glorious linear programming train” in steering Kerala’s financial system via a interval of fiscal stress.

Pointing out that main challenges lay forward for the financial system within the years forward, he urged Left democratic forces to rise as much as the event.

C. Balagopal, chairman, Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation (KSIDC), mentioned present insurance policies and public finance constraints needs to be understood throughout the framework of whether or not authorities insurance policies are selling the expansion of worth addition in sectors, and what must be executed to generate extra worth addition in them. “How the sectoral distribution of the gross state home product (GSDP)  and the State assembly whole issue productiveness (TFP) are pertinent questions,” he mentioned.

Additional Chief Secretary (Finance) Ok.R. Jyothilal, GIFT director Ok.J. Joseph and GIFT registrar Saraf A. additionally spoke.

Senior economists and planning specialists are attending the seminar which focusses on growth points that Kerala has been dealing with because the pandemic.