The Hindu : Business : Kamath upbeat on economic growth

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Kamath upbeat on economic growth

P. K. Bhardwaj

NEW DELHI: Exuding confidence and sounding highly optimistic, new Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) President K. V. Kamath on Thursday asserted that the 10 per cent aspirational rate of economic growth is achievable in the next few years.

Speaking to The Hindu soon after taking over as the head of the apex industry body, Mr. Kamath, who is CMD of ICICI Bank, said the strong fundamentals of the economy and huge investments in the pipeline besides mood of corporates and their good performance even in the last financial quarter were all indicating that the target of 10 per cent aspirational growth target was realisable.

Neither there is lack of will on the part of the corporates to go ahead with their investment plans nor is funding their projects much of a problem. All that is needed is that the policies including steps taken to fight inflation should not hurt growth momentum, he said, adding that the growth has to be inclusive.

U. S. slowdown

According to Mr. Kamath, who is CMD of ICICI Bank, the U.S. slowdown should not impact India much even as CII was in sync with the worried Government over inflation and, like the Government, it saw inflation as the key challenge. As an Industry body, CII is against cartelisation; it abhorred it as an unacceptable practice, he said, calling for introspection by the industry in this regard.

Observing that timely catching of signals and remedial steps would have helped the situation from reaching alarming level, he stressed that the counter-inflationary measures should not stultify growth momentum and counselled greater focus on improving productivity, supply and availability of essential commodities at appropriate levels.

For this, he commended long and short term capacity building efforts. While higher production would make Industry more competitive, the high and frequent rate of wage revision at all levels also adversely impacted competitiveness and pushed prices, he said and endorsed Prime Minister’s appeal to the corporate for sobriety in this life style. Later addressing the media, he said the medium term development agenda of CII would include better access to health, education, availability of affordable housing, urban regeneration and rural dynamism and wider access to financial products.

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