PM exudes confidence to bring flagging economy back to high growth trajectory

India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who is in Mexico for the seventh Summit of the Group of 20 developed and developing nations, while addressing the Plenary Session in Los Cabos exuded confidence in India’s economic growth prospects and vowed that his government was determined to employ tough measures like reigning in the burgeoning subsidy burden, to bring the flagging economy back to high growth trajectory. With fundamentals of the Indian economy remaining strong, he expressed confidence of bringing back the rhythm of high growth of 8-9 percent per annum.

The Prime Minister acknowledged that Asia’s third largest economy has slowed down in tandem with other emerging economies as global downturn and especially the impact on capital flows have had an adverse impact on the economy. He also went ahead to underscore that internal constraints too have affected performance and efforts are on to correct them. Indicating that 6.5% growth in India’s gross domestic product in 2011-12 was reasonable figure, given growth rates being experienced in the rest of the world, he stated that Indian citizens are growing impatient for a return to high growth and faster jobs creation.

The government is also taking steps to revive investor sentiment as investment in the country has been affected by the adverse global climate, which impacts both foreign and domestic investors. Singh said that the government is taking various initiatives including making transparent and stable policies designed to provide a level playing field to both domestic and foreign investors, to create an environment that would boost investor sentiment and promote an atmosphere conducive to enterprise and creativity.

In an attempt to improve global investment sentiment and counter perceptions that the government is in policy paralysis, Singh called had upon a meeting of key infrastructure ministries and set ambitious targets as he rooted for infrastructure led economic recovery. After the meeting with ministers of Power, Railways, Roads, Shipping, Civil Aviation and Coal, Manmohan Singh had set an investment target of at least Rs 2 lakh crore for core sector projects in the current fiscal.