Indian economy to grow by 8.5%: M S Ahluwalia

28 Jun 2011 Evaluate

Neglecting the fear of slowdown in growth rate due to the weak economic climate, planning commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia on June 17, said the economy would grow between 8.2-8.5% this year. After a meeting with chief ministers of the western region on the approach paper to the 12th five year plan, M S Ahluwalia said “A reasonable growth target for this year would be between 8.2 and 8.5 percent.”

Ahluwalia said a GDP growth of even 8.2% cannot be called a slowdown in the real sense and added that we should look at increasing growth in the subsequent years. During last financial year, economy grew by 8.5% from 8% of 2009-10. This 8.5% growth was just below the government’s projection of 8.6%. However, for the fourth quarter for 2010-11, economy registered four quarter low growth rate of 7.8%. This moderation in the economic expansion was due to tight monetary policy stance taken by the Reserve Bank of India to curb inflation.  

This moderation has given way to fears of slowdown in growth rate in the current fiscal. Uncertainties also arise from the rising crude and commodity prices and the general rise in inflationary pressures in almost all the economies, besides the petering out of the growth momentum in the Western economies, primarily the US where a double-dip is feared.

In order to fight with hovering inflation, the RBI raised its repo and reverse repo rates for the 10 times since March 2010, on June 16, the central bank increased its key rates by 25 basis points. This continued hike has led to fear of decline in investment and therefore, affecting the overall GDP growth rate. Due to recent increase in price of diesel and other petroleum products, inflation is expected to increase further and prompting RBI to increase its policy rates once again.

A slew of international agencies have also pegged down the country's growth forecast for the year. According to the International Monterey Fund, GDP will slowdown to 8.2 percent in 2011. Ahluwalia said growth will be slow in 2011 the world over compared to 2010, which was a rebound year.

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