The Hindu Business Line : GDP may grow 7-8 pc next fiscal: PM

The Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, flanked by Mr K.N. Memani, President, PHDCCI (left), and Mr Raghupati Singhania, Chairman, Centenary Celebration Committee, at the inauguration of centenary celebration of the chamber in the Capital on Monday. — Kamal Narang

New Delhi , March 21

THE Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, said on Monday that India is poised to achieve a 7-8 per cent GDP growth in the next fiscal.

``We are now at a point in time where we need to accelerate our growth rate into the 7-8 per cent band. We have done it this year and all indications at the moment are that we may be able to deliver growth of 7-8 per cent next year as well. In 20 years, a growth rate of 8 per cent will deliver twice as much growth as compared to a rate of 5 per cent," he said.

The Prime Minister was inaugurating the centenary celebrations of PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PHDCCI) here. He said the Government was committed to putting in place a set of policies that would create the required environment to make this kind of growth possible. "We are committed to creating an environment where creativity and enterprise will flourish, where innovation and knowledge will be rewarded and where growth processes will be inclusive and benefit all sections of society," he said.

Dr Manmohan Singh referred to the first set of reforms in the 1990s and said that they were far easier to implement as they related largely to external trade liberalisation and removal of industrial licensing. "We are now at a stage where the critical bottleneck is infrastructure - physical as well as human. This is a far more complex area and not amenable to easy solutions," he said responding to the issue of infrastructure deficit spoken about by Mr K.N. Memani, President, PHDCCI, in his welcome remarks.

The Prime Minister said that the Government had been systematically addressing policy issues to enhance investment and to create a policy framework for attracting private capital to this area. "We are on the right track and if the momentum is sustained, we will be able to address the infrastructure problem," he said.

Talking about the progress in the infrastructure sector, Dr Singh said all future road construction projects, barring a few exceptions, would be through the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) route.

"We have decided that all future road construction barring a few exceptions will be through the BOT route. This will provide additional investment opportunities for private capital,'' he said. The Union Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, will soon provide further details of the SPV being set up for providing investment capital for infrastructure projects, he said.

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