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Finance Minister promises more reforms before the end of FY20 to boost growth
Oct-17-2019

Expressing optimism over India’s growth Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said that the government’s vision of making India a $5 trillion economy and a global economic powerhouse by 2024-25 is ‘challenging’ but ‘realisable’ and highlighted that more reforms are on the anvil before the close of the fiscal year. She added that Indian economy has been on growth trajectory even since 2014. She also emphasised that a $5 trillion economy will make India a global economic powerhouse moving it from the 7th to 3rd position in terms of current dollar exchange rate.

In order to become a $5 trillion economy, she said ‘India's GDP needs to go faster than what we grew at an average of 7.5% in the last five years. That's a matter of fact statement. Inflation needs to be at 4% to ensure commensurate increase in purchasing power.’ She said inflation in the last five years was 4.5% and has been on a declining path to reach 3.4% in 2018-19. She stressed that fixed investment rate needs to increase from 29% to 36% in the course of the next five years, with some depreciation of the rupee.

Sitharaman said that in July 2019 when she presented the first budget of the second term of the Modi government, India's GDP had decelerated in four consecutive quarters. She said ‘Yet we projected the GDP to grow at 7% in 2019-20, slightly higher than the 6.8% realised in 2018-19. Even when our GDP decelerated in the fifth successive quarter, we did not revise downwards our projections as some institutions around the world have already done.’ She said India has just entered the second half of fiscal year 2019-20 and already implemented a series of reforms, with more on the anvil before the close of the year.

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