Tuesday 3 December 2013

Indian economy to grow at 5% in current fiscal: Finance Minister

Encouraged over the better-than-expected growth in GDP and a significant contraction in country’s current account deficit (CAD), Finance Minister P Chidambaram expressed confidence that the economy would expand by 5 percent and CAD would remain below the set target of 3.7 percent of GDP in current financial year. The CAD narrowed sharply to $5.2 billion, or 1.2 percent of GDP, in the July-September quarter of this fiscal, while, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a measure of the country's total economic output, grew by 4.8% for the reported quarter.

Hoping things will become better in the second half of the current fiscal, Chidambaram has said that Indian economy is passing through a ground of optimism and the government is looking forward to better performance in Q3 and Q4 as the recent improvement in some important sectors like manufacturing, better performance of exports as well as certain steps taken by the government will give boost to economic growth. Meanwhile, Government's forecast for economic growth is above the estimation of several global institutions including World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Asian Development Bank (ADB) that have projected growth rate of below 5 percent for 2013-14.

Furthermore, amid rising concerns over country’s widening fiscal deficit, which has already reached 84.4 percent for the full-year Budget estimates in the first seven months of 2013-14, Chidambaram said that the government will be able to achieve the disinvestment target of Rs 40,000 crore and contain the fiscal deficit within 4.8 percent of the GDP. However, during the first seven months, the government was able to garner only about Rs 1,150 crore through disinvestment.

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