Attaining 7.5% growth this year tough but not impossible: Montek

21 May 2012 Evaluate

Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia has opined that it may be tough for India to achieve a 7.5% growth in the current fiscal but the country has the potential to grow by 8-9% for the next two decades.

The observation is based on the fact that India has achieved a near 7% growth in an uncertain global environment which reflects its underlying potential. Ahluwalia has observed that growth in the last quarter did not show robustness. Moreover inflation accelerated to 7.23% last month combined with a depreciating rupee. The high Current Account Deficit (CAD) further made matters worse. Going forward he is hopeful that the government will take tough decisions to attract foreign capital. These include raising prices of petroleum, restoring fiscal credibility and removing implementation bottlenecks from infrastructure projects.

He has stated categorically that fuel prices have to be raised and people should be educated about this as 80% of petroleum is imported, not increasing its domestic prices in accordance with global rates will only create troubles for the sector. Regarding the depreciating rupee, the deputy chairman stated that as long as the variation is not too much, we don’t need to worry about it. Its movement is the result of an uncertain global environment and the RBI has enough ‘ammunition’ to deal with it. Inflation, he feels needs to be brought down.

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