Double digit growth can happen by Q4, says Goyal
Finance minister Piyush Goyal said on Monday that India’s economy can grow in double digits by the fourth quarter of the current fiscal in view of the uptick in demand.
His comment comes a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that many more steps need to be taken for India to reach double digit growth, Goyal said the government has taken several steps to promote the ease of doing business and maintain stability of the economy.
“I can actually see before my eyes, that we can actually see it happening by the fourth quarter of this year. It’s not impossible,” he said in a reply to a question as to when India would reach the inflextion point for double digit growth.
There is a demand uptick in the economy and India is market place of billions of aspirational consumers, he said.
“I think the efforts this government is doing for making easier to do business... let me correct myself, to make it easier to do honest business... And when this country becomes a nation of honest business, then 10 per cent plus growth is a given for us,” he said.
Goyal also said that this government has been very responerning sible, both in the management in the economy and management of prices.
While addressing Niti Aayog’s fourth meeting of Gov- Council on Sunday, the Prime Minister had said that the challenge before India is to take the economic growth rate to double-digits for which many more steps need to be taken.
The Prime Minister also said that the world expects India to become a $5 trillion economy soon. India, he said, has no shortage of capabilities, capacities and resources and in the current financial year, the states would receive over ₹11 lakh crore from the Centre — an increase of about ₹6 lakh crore from the last year of the previous government.
Observing that the Indian economy has grown at a healthy rate of 7.7% in the fourth quarter of 2017-18, Modi had said the “challenge now is to take this growth rate to double digits, for which many more steps have to be taken”.
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