India's big liberalisation came a little later, in 1991.
The Reserve Bank has managed the rupee well enough without any target.The central bank is now studying the report, which has disappointed reformers in the government of Manmohan Singh, the prime minister, who, as finance minister in 1991, oversaw the first big liberalisation of the Indian economy.
But his Labour shadow, Gregg McClymont, was right to point out that the last big pensions liberalisation in the 1980s was followed by a mis-selling scandal.
But that good news is tempered by two big trends: liberalisation and commoditisation.There have long been two very different kinds of generics markets: genuinely competitive ones, like those found in America, Britain, the Netherlands and Scandinavia, and coddled ones, like those of Japan, the rest of continental Europe and much of the developing world.
This may reflect the growing popularity of bilateral trade deals in the absence of big multilateral liberalisations.
In his dark pin-stripe and Garrick Club tie, he presided, with his chairman Robin Duval, over the biggest ever liberalisation of cinematic content.
Spain's regulator is prone to yield to political pressure.According to Mr Miranda, the lack of harmonised regulation and local regulators' distrust of the wider market are big obstacles to liberalisation.
This far exceeds the 5-10% of the market that even the biggest fans of liberalisation expected new competitors to take.For big customers the benefits are clear.
That's a little troubling for the government, since the Sun's abandonment of the Tories in favour of Labour in 1997 was reckoned to be Tony Blair's biggest media coup.Liberalisation's opponents base their case on four arguments.
It employs some 5m people directly and indirectly, and its turnover is roughly 1% of Europe's combined GDP.But arguably the biggest drag on liberalisation is old-fashioned resistance to open markets, plus a dash of reverence for letter writing.
But the international development department was also a fan of the "big bang" approach to liberalisation being implemented by both national and state government in India, and spent millions on consultants to advise on and encourage privatisation, trade liberalisation and the reduction of support to farmers.
