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Dr Singh said the growth rate of the economy is strongly correlated to investment [BRICS5]
Trying to dispel the doubts about the India growth story, the Indian prime minister said “We will prove the prophet of doom wrong.”
Singh was addressing 1,500 of India’s top business leaders at a Confederation of Indian Industry CII AGM in New Delhi on Wednesday.
Dr Singh said the government will further relax the FDI policy and take steps to bring down inflation.
“I do not believe our growth can only be five per cent,” he said, adding, “Each of us and the world at large has a stake in India’s economic rise as a plural, liberal and secular democracy”
Singh also called on the Indian industry to partner with the government in its efforts to put the economy back on the path laid out in the Twelfth Plan.
“I have always believed that both government and business have to be partners in writing the story of development,” he urged.
“We are seeing temporary downturn, partly due to global factors. We can get back to eight per cent growth rate,” Dr Singh said, adding that government will take speedy and decisive action to push growth.
The government is hopeful of a better performance in the new fiscal year and has pegged the annual economic growth to be as high as 6.7 per cent.
Dr Singh reiterated his government’s commitment towards inclusive growth, saying the first step towards arresting the economic slowdown would be to restore the macroeconomic balance.
The prime minister stressed the importance of the private sector in India’s economic growth, saying, “We are a private-sector led economy with 75 per cent investment in the private sector.”
The growth rate of the economy is strongly correlated to investment, he added.
“Fiscal deficit levels were unacceptable was due to cautious policy of fiscal stimulation followed by most countries,” Singh said, adding, “Other countries are reversing and that is precisely what the finance minister has tried to do.”
India has seen recent legislative measures in the banking sector which have paved the way for granting of new bank licences by the Reserve Bank of India.
The prime minister also said he was encouraged by the progress made in the last three months by the work of the newly constituted Cabinet Committee on Investments.
The BRICS Post
