The external environment for growth and jobs in India just got improved.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh believes that the summit meeting of the group of 20 leading economies of the world that concluded in Seoul on Friday had made considerable progress at least in four key areas which will help achieve greater global financial stability and higher trade and investment flows. That would be helpful for economic well being of people in India.

That is the key take-away from the Seoul summit in so far as the common man in India is concerned, Singh told accompanying media persons on the return trip home.

“We have to do a lot internally to improve our economy. But we also need a conducive external environment”, Singh said, expressing satisfaction in particular over the G20 leaders overwhelmingly endorsing his plan to rebalance the global economy by funding development and infrastructure projects in poor countries.

Singh agreed that India has to have suitable policies and expeditious project clearance and management to get domestic private and foreign investments to realise the $1-trillion infrastructure building plan that he has often talked about. At the same time, the G20 decision to set up a high-level panel to work out how surplus savings in some countries can be intermediated to build infrastructure in other nations that need it the most would be really helpful.

The prime minister was confident that India has to absorptive capacity for large amount of foreign capital. “Large capital flows”, he said, “can create problems … but we have not reached that stage”.

“It is true that we have a trade deficit – that is excess of imports over exports -- which is 7-8 per cent of GDP but we will manage our deficit well”, Singh asserted. He expressed confidence that large capital inflows will not be allowed to create inflation.

The PM was of the opinion that nothing much be made out of the so called dispute between the US and China over the valuation of the latter’s currency yuan.

The US and China have a robust economic relation, he said, adding that he believed that currency valuation would not stand in the way in so far as the commercial dealings between the world’s top two economies are concerned.

Singh listed the reforms of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), including a greater say and voting power for emerging countries such as India, among the four areas of progress made at Seoul. India has ascended to the eighth place in the IMF voting power pecking order from a ranking of 22.

The G20 Summit also endorsed the IMF plan to double the quota of its members that they can subscribe to and borrow from the lender of the last resort. India would be putting in an additional Rs 14,000-15,000 crore ( over $3.5 billion) to subscribe to additional IMF quota.