India dedicated to reforms, potential to clock 9 percent growth: Finance Minister

Despite inflation affecting the economic growth, the country has the ability to post strong growth numbers. On expressing government’s commitment to deepening reforms and liberalizing laws for foreign investment in sectors like retail and defense, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said India has the potential to clock 9 percent growth rate though inflation is a concern.

While addressing the fourth ministerial level India-UK Economic and Financial Dialogue, Mukherjee said 'we are in the process of deepening policy reforms in the financial sector ... discussions are under way to build consensus on further liberalization of the FDI policy in retail and defense sectors'. By adding further he said, 'we have recorded one of the fastest growth rates in the world and are nearly back to our pre-crisis growth levels. We believe that growth potential of India is over 9 percent.'

Despite the global slowdown, Indian economy has performed level, during the last financial year; the economy registered a growth of 8.5 percent. However, Pranab Mukherjee expressed his concerns over the downturn risk to the economic growth, he said that there were downside risks emanating from continuity uncertainty about energy and commodity prices which have implications for meeting 'fiscal deficit targets, moderating domestic inflation and improving investment sentiments in the economy.'

From this visit India is looking to strengthen the financial relationship with UK. For this visit Finance Minister is accompanied by Department of Economic Affairs Secretary R. Gopalan, Chief Economic Advisor Kaushik Basu and Sebi Chairman U K Sinha. This is the fourth ministerial level India-UK economic and financial dialogue. The meeting would also focus on a wide range of issues such as strengthening of the G-20 and IMF surveillance, the UK-India infrastructure partnership, global and domestic financial regulatory reforms and strengthening of UK-India financial sector reforms, among others.