Despite India’s high fiscal and current account deficits, Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma, on Saturday, asserted that the fundamentals of the economy remained strong.
“An atmosphere of gloom is being created unnecessarily through speculative hammering, and we need to overcome this despondency and negativity,” he said at a function organised by the Federation of Indian Export Organization (FIEO).
A day after the country reported a 4.4 per cent growth in GDP, the lowest in four years, the minister said that India’s GDP would grow by 5.5 per cent during the current fiscal and export performance would be better.
“Regardless of the GDP numbers released yesterday (Friday), I am confident that India’s GDP growth will not be less than 5.5 per cent this year,” he said .
He said exports had done well in the first four months of this fiscal, but did not reveal any numbers.
The Minister said the government has taken several measures to push merchandise exports to earn foreign exchange.
Earlier, speaking at the CHEMEXCIL Export Awards function on Friday evening, Mr. Sharma had said that India would remain among the top three destinations for foreign investment in spite of the economic downturn.
He asserted that India’s growth story could not be written off and that there was no reason to panic.
