Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das has expressed hopes that the Indian economy will grow more than 7% in the next financial year as the Budget has come up with several measures to provide boost to various sectors. The secretary's statement comes hours after RBI Governor Urjit Patel announced a cut in the growth forecast to 6.9 per cent for the current fiscal, from estimated 7.1 per cent earlier, even as he said that the India’s GDP growth will bounce back to 7.4 per cent next fiscal.
Shaktikanta has stated that RBI in its previous policy review in December had lowered the GDP growth forecast from 7.6 per cent to 7.1 per cent. On central bank’s monetary policy, Das said that the monetary policy committee has unanimously recommended retention of the current rates of interest. He expressed confidence that the banks will step up their lending to various sectors of the economy and also focus on individual loans that is housing loans, consumption loans as well as meeting the requirements of SMEs, other corporates and other business entities.
Talking about the budget, Das said that as far as the government is concerned, the agenda for the financial year 2017-18 have been very clearly spelt out in the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s Budget speech and added that now the government is focusing on implementing all the Budget announcements. He also pointed out that the Finance Minister has also announced several measures to give a boost to the housing sector in general and affordable housing in particular.
The economic affairs secretary has further said that these are the kinds of things which will give momentum to growth and the expectation that the finance minister has also projected in the Budget that the growth should revive. He also noted that after the exchange of old notes, banks have already started reducing the rates, which have been reduced considerably.
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