Economic growth rate of 8-9% attainable: Rangarajan

The Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, Chairman, C Rangarajan, while delivering the second Ayyadevara HMA Foundation day lecture at Fapcci, affirmed that economic growth of India for this fiscal is likely to achieve atleast 8% growth by tackling inflation, reducing fiscal deficit and by focusing more on agriculture production and infrastructure.

He opined that sectors like agriculture and infrastructure, where power is a major aspect, play a major role in bringing down the inflation. He added that the increased farm production automatically brings down inflation to a large extent, while power sector also have a positive influence on the economy.

He also stated that aggressive policy action is needed to reduce petroleum subsidies for containing fiscal deficit at a budgeted level of 5.1 per of GDP in this financial year. The Centre's fiscal deficit had ballooned to 5.76 percent of GDP in the last fiscal due to high fuel subsidy outgo.