FM hopeful to attain GDP growth of 5.5-6% in 2012-13

05 Nov 2012 Evaluate

Amid peaking inflation rate in line with global financial ill health, Finance Minister P Chidambaram has expressed optimism to attain 5.5% to 6.0% financial growth this fiscal, while expecting it to return to 7% growth by 2013 and 8% by 2014-15.

Last month, the International Monetary Fund had scaled down India’s economic growth estimate for 2012-13 to 4.9% from 6.1% previous year. Chidambaram also expressed his concerns over the inflation rate, which had hit a 10-month high of 7.8% in September.

Reserve Bank of India had left interest rates unchanged at 8% last week, without considering government’s pressure to lower rates for the first time since April. While, the central bank had trimmed India’s GDP growth forecast to 5.8% from previous 6.5%. It also scaled up its inflation projection in March to 7.5% from a previous 7%.

However, Chidambaram emphasized that a combination of effective monetary policy, spending cuts, and a tightening of tax collection is necessary to pare the fiscal deficit and to trigger growth. He also denied the chance for India to face a credit rating downgrade, after the rating agency Standard & Poor's recent comments that the nation holds one third chance to be rated to junk over the next two years.

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