Amid fears of slowdown in the global economy resurfacing, the Plan panel today said it will not be easy to achieve 9 per cent growth during the 12th Plan (2012-17).
“...9 per cent growth target for the 12th Plan is not going to be easy. What will be easy is somewhere around 7-7.5 per cent,’’ the Planning Commission Deputy Chairman, Mr Montek Singh Ahluwalia, said, while addressing the annual summit of the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) here today.
He further said: “We should start with 7 per cent growth and gradually go up to 9 per cent over the five-year period...We should not be worried by short-term problems.’’
Mr Ahluwalia said that though the global economic scenario looks depressing at the moment, the situation may improve over the next few months.
“I think there is a tendency to be over-impressed with what happened in the last three months,” he said.
At the meeting of the full Planning Commission, chaired by the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, on August 20, which approved the Approach Paper for the 12th Plan, the growth target during the five-year period was set at 9 per cent.
However, Dr Singh had said on the occasion that economic growth could go up to 9.2 per cent in 2012-17.
The Planning Commission had also said that it will revisit the growth target for the 12th Plan next year.
The nine per cent growth target was also initially set for the ongoing 11th Plan. However, it was later scaled down to 8.2 per cent on account of the global economic downturn of 2008-09.
India was growing by over 9 per cent before the global financial crisis in 2008 pulled down the economic growth to 6.8 per cent in 2008-09.
While the government expects economic growth to be around 8.5 per cent this fiscal, the Reserve Bank has projected the economy to expand by 8 per cent. The GDP growth in the last fiscal was 8.5 per cent.